go-sdk/conformance
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Paul Carleton 67bd3f2e2b
mcp: add automatic DNS rebinding protection for localhost servers (#760)
## Summary

Add DNS rebinding protection that is automatically enabled when requests
arrive via localhost (127.0.0.1, [::1]). This protects against malicious
websites using DNS rebinding to interact with local MCP servers.

(note: this was a claude assisted PR, mostly wanted to see how difficult
passing this test would be for this SDK)

## Design Goal: Secure by Default

The primary goal is to make it difficult to run a localhost server
without these protections by mistake. There are other approaches that
could provide secure defaults (e.g., a helper for `ListenAndServe` that
does the localhost check), but using `http.LocalAddrContextKey` for
runtime detection seemed like the most backwards compatible approach and
least likely to be disabled by accident.

With this implementation:
- **No code changes required** - existing servers get protection
automatically
- **No opt-in needed** - protection activates based on the connection's
local address
- **Explicit opt-out** - users must deliberately set
`DisableLocalhostProtection: true`

## Changes

- Add `DisableLocalhostProtection` option to `StreamableHTTPOptions`
- Add `isLocalhostAddr` and `isLocalhostHost` helper functions  
- Validate Host header at start of `ServeHTTP`, rejecting non-localhost
Host headers with 403 Forbidden

## How it works

The protection uses `http.LocalAddrContextKey` to detect the
connection's local address at runtime. When a request arrives via
localhost (127.0.0.1 or [::1]), the handler validates that the Host
header also matches a localhost value. If not, the request is rejected
with 403 Forbidden.

This approach means:
- Protection is enabled for requests arriving via localhost, regardless
of whether the server listens on `127.0.0.1` or `0.0.0.0`
- Requests arriving via non-localhost IPs (e.g., external network
requests) are **not** affected

### Edge case: Reverse proxies

If a reverse proxy (e.g., Envoy, nginx) runs on the same host and
forwards requests to the MCP server via localhost while preserving the
original Host header, those requests would be rejected. In this case,
users should either:
1. Set `DisableLocalhostProtection: true`
2. Configure the proxy to rewrite the Host header to localhost

## Testing

- Added unit tests for `isLocalhostAddr` and `isLocalhostHost` helper
functions
- Added integration tests for the full protection flow
- Verified against the MCP conformance test suite:
  - `localhost-host-rebinding-rejected`: PASS
  - `localhost-host-valid-accepted`: PASS

## Related

- Spec:
https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-11-25/basic/security_best_practices#local-mcp-server-compromise
- TypeScript SDK implementation: `localhostHostValidation()` middleware
- Conformance test: `dns-rebinding-protection` scenario

---------

Co-authored-by: Maciek Kisiel <mkisiel@google.com>
2026-02-13 16:23:32 +01:00
..
everything-client conformance: create everything-client with basic scenarios and configure GitHub action to run it 2026-02-03 09:37:23 +01:00
everything-server conformance: prepare the conformance test suite 2026-02-03 09:37:23 +01:00
baseline.yml mcp: add automatic DNS rebinding protection for localhost servers (#760) 2026-02-13 16:23:32 +01:00