Executive brief
NetLicensing-MCP is a tool used to manage software licenses and product configurations. A security flaw in its HTTP mode allows anyone on the network to perform administrative actions—such as creating, modifying, or deleting licenses—without providing a password. This occurs because the system mistakenly uses the server owner's private master key to authorize requests from unauthenticated strangers, potentially leading to unauthorized data access or service disruption.
Technical details
A Missing Authentication for Critical Function (CWE-306) exists in NetLicensing-MCP when deployed in HTTP transport mode. The 'ApiKeyMiddleware' in 'server.py' fails to reject requests that lack an API key, unconditionally forwarding them to downstream handlers. Because the downstream client in 'client.py' defaults to the 'NETLICENSING_API_KEY' environment variable when no per-request key is provided, unauthenticated network requests are executed using the server operator's credentials. An attacker can exploit this to perform any action supported by the MCP tools, including product enumeration and destructive delete operations. The vulnerability is addressed in version 0.1.6.
Affected products
- Labs64 netlicensing-mcp <= 0.1.5
Timeline
- 2026-06-04: advisory: Initial GitHub Advisory published
- 2026-07-14: advisory: Advisory updated with CVE-2026-54446
- 2026-07-14: patched: Version 0.1.6 released