Medium · published September 15, 2026
mcp-searxng is a Model Context Protocol server that gives AI assistants web search and URL-reading capabilities through SearXNG. Prior to 1.2.0, the web_url_read URL policy in src/url-reader.ts can be bypassed while MCP_HTTP_HARDEN is enabled and MCP_HTTP_ALLOW_PRIVATE_URLS is not enabled because redirect targets are not revalidated, 0.0.0.0 is not classified as an internal address, and IPv4-mapped IPv6 literals canonicalized to hexadecimal form are not recognized. These inputs allow an attacker-influenced tool call to make the MCP server fetch loopback or internal HTTP resources and return content from local services, private APIs, service-mesh endpoints, or cloud metadata endpoints. The separate hostname-to-private-address case addressed by the earlier partial fix is not part of these residual bypasses. This issue is fixed in version 1.2.0.