When analyzing modern software security, the industry often creates an artificial divide between "cloud/web security" and "native binary exploitation." In reality, both domains share a single fundamental vulnerability archetype: untrusted serialized input crossing an unvalidated execution boundary.

In this technical retrospective from Simply Security Labs ( ccsimplyspolit.github.io ), we analyze the common thread connecting our coordinated vulnerability disclosures across enterprise network infrastructure ( FreeRADIUS , ntop/nDPI , ossrs/srs ) and frontier AI agent frameworks ( github/gh-aw , czlonkowski/n8n-mcp , Infomaniak/mcp-server-kchat ).

1. The Anatomy of Protocol Boundary Failure

In native protocol parsers, input data arrives as a raw sequence of bytes over a network socket. The parser must decode field lengths, advance buffer pointers, and allocate memory structures.…