MCP Server Kubernetes has an Argument Injection in port_forward tool via space-splitting

Summary

The port_forward tool in mcp-server-kubernetes constructs a kubectl command as a string and splits it on spaces before passing to spawn(). Unlike all other tools in the codebase which correctly use execFileSync("kubectl", argsArray), port_forward uses string concatenation with user-controlled input (namespace, resourceType, resourceName, localPort, targetPort) followed by naive .split(" ") parsing. This allows an attacker to inject arbitrary kubectl flags by embedding spaces in any of these fields.

Affected Versions

<= 3.4.0

Vulnerability Details

File: src/tools/port_forward.ts (compiled: dist/tools/port_forward.js)

The startPortForward function builds a kubectl command string by concatenating user-controlled input:

let command = `kubectl port-forward`;
if (input.namespace) {
    command += ` -n ${input.namespace}`;
}
command += ` ${input.resourceType}/${input.resourceName} ${input.localPort}:${input.targetPort}`;

This string is then split on spaces and passed to spawn():

async function executeKubectlCommandAsync(command) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        const [cmd, ...args] = command.split(" ");
        const process = spawn(cmd, args);

Because .split(" ") treats every space as an argument boundary, an attacker can inject additional kubectl flags by embedding spaces in any of the user-controlled fields.

Contrast with other tools

Every other tool in the codebase correctly uses array-based argument passing:

// kubectl-get.js, kubectl-apply.js, kubectl-delete.js, etc. — SAFE pattern
execFileSync("kubectl", ["get", resourceType, "-n", namespace, ...], options);

Only port_forward uses the vulnerable string-concatenation-then-split pattern.

Exploitation

Attack 1: Expose internal Kubernetes services to the network

By default, kubectl port-forward binds to 127.0.0.1 (localhost only). An attacker can inject --address=0.0.0.0 to bind on all interfaces, exposing the forwarded Kubernetes service to the entire network:

Tool call: port_forward({
  resourceType: "pod",
  resourceName: "my-database --address=0.0.0.0",
  namespace: "production",
  localPort: 5432,
  targetPort: 5432
})