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Everything you need to know about Model Context Protocol (MCP) security.
Official Security Considerations from the Official MCP Specification Rev: 2025-03-26
Note
15.04.2025: The current MCP auth specification is in progress of being replaced by a more robust specification. Please join the conversation if you have concerns around the current auth specification.
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Servers MUST:
- Validate all tool inputs
- Implement proper access controls
- Rate limit tool invocations
- Sanitize tool outputs
-
Clients SHOULD:
- Prompt for user confirmation on sensitive operations
- Show tool inputs to the user before calling the server, to avoid malicious or accidental data exfiltration
- Validate tool results before passing to LLM
- Implement timeouts for tool calls
- Log tool usage for audit purposes
Warning
For trust & safety and security, clients MUST consider tool annotations to be untrusted unless they come from trusted servers.
Warning
For trust & safety and security, there SHOULD always be a human in the loop* with the ability to deny tool invocations.
Applications SHOULD:
- Provide UI that makes clear which tools are being exposed to the AI model.
- Insert clear visual indicators when tools are invoked.
- Present confirmation prompts to the user for operations, to ensure a human is in the loop.
Note
*Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) means that user help monitor and guide automated tasks, like deciding whether to accept tool requests in Cursor.
- (2025-05) Beyond the Protocol: Unveiling Attack Vectors in the Model Context Protocol Ecosystem
- (2025-05) Enterprise-Grade Security for the Model Context Protocol (MCP): Frameworks and Mitigation Strategies
- (2025-04) Simplified and Secure MCP Gateways for Enterprise AI Integration by Ivo Brett
- (2025-04) MCP Guardian: A Security-First Layer for Safeguarding MCP-Based AI System by Sonu Kumar, Anubhav Girdhar, Ritesh Patil, Divyansh Tripathi
- (2025-04) MCP Safety Audit: LLMs with the Model Context Protocol Allow Major Security Exploits by Brandon Radosevich, John Halloran
- (2025-03) Model Context Protocol (MCP): Landscape, Security Threats, and Future Research Directions by Xinyi Hou, Yanjie Zhao, Shenao Wang, Haoyu Wang
- (13.06.2025) MCP Auth: The Future of AI Agent Security - by Arcade.dev
- (17.05.2025) A2A - MCP SECURITY Threats: Protect your AI Agents by Discover AI
- (06.05.2025) Making MCP Production Ready – Building MCP for Enterprise - by Arcade.dev
- (11.04.2025) This MCP Server Trick Can Steal Your API Keys by Prompt Engineering
- (09.04.2025) MCP Servers are Security Nightmares... by Better Stack
- (03.04.2025) MCP Security: Vetting Servers to Mitigate Tool Poisoning Attacks by JeredBlue
- (03.04.2025) Model Context Protocol (MCP) Security Concerns by Cory Wolff
- (02.06.2025) Agentic Access: OAuth Isn't Enough | Zero Trust for AI Agents w/ Nick Taylor (Pomerium + MCP)
- (08.08.2025) we hijacked cursor via jira mcp by submitting a support ticket by @mbrg0
- (28.07.2025) We built the security layer MCP always needed by Cliff Smith
- (24.07.2025) Security Advisory: Anthropic's Slack MCP Server Vulnerable to Data Exfiltration by WUNDERWUZZI
- (11.07.2025) Securing Model Context Protocol (MCP) with Teleport and AWS
- (10.07.2025) Critical mcp-remote Vulnerability Enables Remote Code Execution, Impacting 437,000+ Downloads by Ravie Lakshmanan
- (06.07.2025) Combine the Supabase MCP with another MCP that provides exposure to untrusted tokens and a way to send data back out again by Simon Willison
- (05.07.2025) Neon official remote MCP exploited!
- (19.06.2025) Cato CTRL Threat Research: PoC Attack Targeting Atlassian's Model Context Protocol (MCP) Introduces New "Living Off AI" Risk
- (18.06.2025) Asana Discloses Data Exposure Bug in MCP Server by Greg Pollock
- (30.05.2025) Poison everywhere: No output from your MCP server is safe by Simcha Kosman
- (26.05.2025) GitHub MCP Exploited: Accessing private repositories via MCP by invariantlabs.ai
- (20.05.2025) Securing the Model Context Protocol: Building a safer agentic future on Windows
- (16.05.2025) MCP Security in 2025
- (02.05.2025) Security Best Practices by Model Context Protocol
- (30.04.2025) Insecure credential storage plagues MCP by Keith Hoodlet
- (29.04.2025) Deceiving users with ANSI terminal codes in MCP by Keith Hoodlet
- (29.04.2025) Building Own MCP - Augmented LLM for Threat Hunting by Eito Tamura
- (23.04.2025) How MCP servers can steal your conversation history by Keith Hoodlet
- (21.04.2025) Jumping the line: How MCP servers can attack you before you ever use them
- (19.04.2025) OAuth's Role in MCP Security by Gunnar Peterson
- (17.04.2025) Research Briefing: MCP Security by Rami McCarthy
- (17.04.2025) MCP Not Safe - Reasons and Ideas by Phala Network
- (15.04.2025) MCP can be a security nightmare for building AI Agents by Rakesh Gohel
- (15.04.2025) Model Context Protocol (MCP) aka Multiple Cybersecurity Perils by Chris Martorella
- (14.04.2025) Model Context Protocol (MCP) Security by Evren
- (14.04.2025) Security Analysis: Potential AI Agent Hijacking via MCP and A2A Protocol Insights by Nicky
- (14.04.2025) MCP Security Checklist: A Security Guide for the AI Tool Ecosystem by slowmist
- (13.04.2025) Everything Wrong with MCP by Shrivu Shankar
- (11.04.2025) Diving Into the MCP Authorization Specification by Allen Zhou
- (11.04.2025) Vulnerability Discovered in Base-MCP: Hackers Can Redirect Transactions on Cursor AI and Anthropic Claude by @jlwhoo7
- (09.04.2025) Here's an example of remote MCP malware that steals your .env secrets in @cursor_ai by Maciej Pulikowski
- (09.04.2025) Old Security Rakes In New MCP Yards by Den Delimarsky
- (09.04.2025) Model Context Protocol has prompt injection security problems by Simon Willisons
- (07.04.2025) (RFC) Update the Authorization specification for MCP servers #284 by localden
- (07.04.2025) Improving The Model Context Protocol Authorization Spec - One RFC At A Time by Den Delimarsky
- (07.04.2025) Running MCP Tools Securely by mcp.run
- (07.04.2025) WhatsApp MCP Exploited: Exfiltrating your message history via MCP by invariantlabs.ai
- (07.04.2025) An Introduction to MCP and Authorization by auth0
- (06.04.2025) The “S” in MCP Stands for Security by Elena Cross
- (04.04.2025) MCP Servers are not safe! by Mehul Gupta
- (03.04.2025) Let's fix OAuth in MCP by Aaron Parecki
- (03.04.2025) MCP Resource Poisoning Prompt Injection Attacks by Bernard IQ
- (01.04.2025) MCP Security Notification: Tool Poisoning Attacks by invariantlabs.ai
- (31.03.2025) The MCP Authorization Spec Is... a Mess for Enterprise by Christian Posta
- (31.03.2025) Securing the Model Context Protocol by Alex Rosenzweig
- (29.03.2025) MCP Servers: The New Security Nightmare by equixly.com
- (23.03.2025) AI Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Security by Cisco
- (18.03.2025) New Vulnerability in GitHub Copilot and Cursor: How Hackers Can Weaponize Code Agents by Ziv Karliner
- (13.02.2025) Chained commands (&&) bypass yolo mode “denylist” in Cursor by lukemmtt
- (18.06.2025) The Model Context Protocol Security Reality Check
- Secure MCP - Security auditing tool to detect MCP vulnerabilities and misconfigurations by makalin
- mcp-context-protector - Security wrapper for MCP servers by trailofbits
- AI-Infra-Guard by Tencent Zhuque Lab - MCP Server Security Analysis Tool - a comprehensive, intelligent, easy-to-use, and lightweight AI Infrastructure Vulnerability Assessment.
- MCP Guardian - Manage your LLM's access to MCP servers by eqtylab
- MCP Tool Poisoning Experiments by invariantlabs-ai
- Google Security Operations and Threat Intelligence MCP Server - Access Google's security products and services
- MCP Watch - Vulnerability scanner for MCP servers
- MCP Security Checklist: A Security Guide for the AI Tool Ecosystem by SlowMist
- workers-mcp - Connect Cloudflare Workers with your MCP clients by Cloudflare
- MCP Gateway - Acts as intermediary between LLMs and other MCP servers by lasso-security
- AWS Security MCP - Access AWS security tools by groovyBugify]
- MCPAuth: Gateway Authentication for Secure Enterprise MCP Integrations by Oide Brett
- mcpserverscanner.com by orgor
- mcpscan.ai
- Damn Vulnerable MCP Server by harishsg993010
- ToolHive - making MCP servers easy and secure by StacklokLabs
- MCP-Shield – Detect security issues in MCP servers by riseandignite
- mcp-scan by invariantlabs-ai
- MCP Ethical Hacking by cmpxchg16
- mcp-injection-experiments by invariantlabs-ai
- MCP Defender - Blocks malicious MCP traffic
- Octocode - AI-powered developer assistant that enables advanced research, analysis and discovery across GitHub ecosystem. Allow smart search of security patterns across repositories.
- Nuclei MCP Integration by addcontent - Provides a standardized MCP interface for Nuclei, a fast and customizable vulnerabilty scanner, for performing scans and managing vulnerablity assessments
- Illumio MCP Server by alexgoller - MCP server for interacting with Illumio Policy Compute Engine for Illumio workload management, label operations, traffic flow analysis
- TriageMCP by eversinc33 - MCP server for doing basic static triage of Portable Executable (PE) files
- RunReveal MCP Server - MCP server for RunReveal to query security logs at scale
- Semgrep MCP Server - MCP server for using Semgrep to scan code for vulnerabilities
- GhidraMCP by LaurieWired - MCP server for automatic reverse engineering in Ghidra, a software reverse engineering platform.
- IDA-Pro-MCP by mrexodia - MCP server for reverse engineering in IDA Pro, a tool for analyzing software and binary files.
- binaryninja-mcp by MCPPhalanx - MCP server for Binary Ninja, a binary analysis tool.
- Burp Suite MCP by PortSwigger - MCP integration for web security testing in Burp Suite, a security testing tool for web applications.
- BloodHound-MCP-AI by MorDavid - MCP server integration for BloodHound, a tool for analyzing Active Directory domains.
- RoadRecon MCP by atomicchonk - MCP server for Azure AD data analysis with ROADRecon, a tool for mapping Azure Active Directory environments.
- Jadx MCP Plugin by mobilehackinglab - Jadx plugin for MCP server access via HTTP, used for decompiling Android apps.
- VirusTotal MCP Server by BurtTheCoder - MCP server for querying the VirusTotal API, a service for analyzing files and URLs for viruses.
- Shodan MCP Server by BurtTheCoder - MCP server for querying the Shodan API, which provides data on Internet-connected devices.
- DNStwist MCP Server by BurtTheCoder - MCP server for DNS fuzzing with dnstwist, a tool for detecting phishing and domain takeover threats.
- Maigret MCP Server by BurtTheCoder - MCP server for OSINT data collection with Maigret, a tool that gathers user info from various sources.
- pomerium/pomerium - Identity-aware proxy with native support for Zero Trust access, now including MCP support.
- Example implementations:
- urldna/mcp - urlDNA MCP server for phishing detection and URL analysis through advanced contextual scanning.
- Awesome Cybersecurity Agentic AI - Collection of resources on using AI agents for security use cases
- (31.03.2025) I gave Claude root access to my server... Model Context Protocol explained by Fireship
- (17.03.2025) Model Context Protocol (MCP): The Key To Agentic AI by Jack Herrington
- Official MCP Specification
- Model Context Protocol - Official MCP website
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