Description

IBM ContextForge MCP Gateway - Translate utility <= 1.0.8 MCP Context Forge could allow a remote attacker to obtain sensitive information from other sessions due to exposure of data elements to the wrong session.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "7.4",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-04T17:16:56.550Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-04T17:16:56.550Z",
  "executiveSummary": "The IBM ContextForge MCP Gateway Translate utility, version 1.0.8 and earlier, is susceptible to an improper session isolation vulnerability. This flaw involves the inadvertent exposure of data elements across distinct user sessions. An unauthenticated or remote attacker can exploit this weakness to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information belonging to other active sessions. The vulnerability stems from a failure to correctly compartmentalize stateful data, potentially leading to unauthorized data disclosure and a breach of confidentiality. Because the Translate utility is designed to handle potentially sensitive contextual information, this cross-session data leakage carries significant risk, allowing adversaries to harvest proprietary or private data processed within the MCP environment. Exploitation does not require elevated privileges, as the logical error resides in the gateway's core handling of session-scoped data.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability resides within the IBM ContextForge MCP Gateway Translate utility's internal state management mechanism. The root cause is an improper scoping of data elements, which results in a collision or leakage between session-specific contexts. In the affected architecture, the Translate utility likely utilizes a global or inadequately protected data structure to store transitory information during the translation process. When multiple concurrent sessions are active, the gateway fails to enforce strict boundary separation between individual memory buffers or session stores.\nThe attack flow initiates when an attacker triggers a translation request through the MCP Gateway. Due to the lack of session validation in the data retrieval or storage logic, the system incorrectly associates sensitive data elements from a victim's concurrent session with the attacker’s request. When the attacker initiates a subsequent interaction, the Translate utility inadvertently returns the cached or incorrectly mapped data belonging to the victim session. This occurs because the gateway's dispatching mechanism fails to verify that the returned object identifier or data stream corresponds uniquely to the requesting session ID.\nThis vulnerability is classified as an authorization and session management failure where the application context is erroneously shared. The vulnerable component is specifically the translation module within the MCP Gateway architecture. Because this utility processes potentially sensitive input, the impact is a direct leakage of information that should be protected under multi-tenancy or session isolation policies. An attacker does not need to perform complex memory manipulation; rather, they exploit the gateway's logical failure to maintain state isolation. The post-exploitation impact includes the systematic harvesting of sensitive data, which may be leveraged to further compromise the integrity of the IBM ContextForge environment or associated back-end services. Given the nature of MCP (Model Context Protocol) gateways, this data leakage could include system prompts, user-specific instructions, or sensitive internal data passed between agents and the gateway."
}