PUBLIC-EVIDENCE TOPIC COLLECTION

MCP Security Case Studies, Threats, and Evaluation References

MCP security case studies covering malicious servers, unsafe tool configuration, command execution, credential theft, and agent hijacking.

4 matched references · all link to complete source and scoring records

Why this topic matters

Model Context Protocol deployments join models to tools, local processes, data, and credentials. The cases in this collection show why server trust, tool authorization, configuration integrity, transport boundaries, and least-privilege execution must be evaluated together.

Evaluation questions

  • Can a repository, package, configuration file, or remote server alter MCP tool behavior?
  • Does every tool call carry a narrowly scoped identity and authorization decision?
  • Can STDIO, shell, network, or filesystem capabilities cross the intended deployment boundary?
  • Are server changes, new capabilities, and sensitive actions independently verified and logged?

Framework routes: OWASP Agentic AI · MITRE ATLAS. External frameworks guide threat, control, and evidence selection; measured deployment evidence determines AITBM scores.

MCP security case library

Use these records as incident references, test-design inputs, and examples of evidence-to-rubric reasoning. They are retrospective scenarios, not current vendor ratings or assessments of record.

2026-07-06 · Agentic / MCP System

Amazon Q's MCP Auto-Load Bug Made Cloned Repos a Cloud Credential Risk

When a client treats repository content as configuration, the poisoning surface is the tool manifest rather than the model — Ro-4 and Cn-5 both collapse to 0.00 on the same evidence, and a shipped, version-boundaried vendor fix earns Rf = 0.00 without moving any IVP score, which is exactly the layer separation AITBM is built to preserve.

Indicative ERS 5.4 · 2.9–7.8

2026-06-22 · Agentic / MCP System

Agentjacking: How Fake Sentry Errors Turn MCP Telemetry into Agent Code Execution

A tool integration that is read-only by design can still drive an agent to code execution: the boundary that failed is the MCP output boundary, not the model, which is why Ro-1 stays at 0.25 while five Containment sub-metrics sit at the ad-hoc anchor and Cp is corroborated at 1.00 by an ungated path from an anonymous event submitter to host credential material.

Indicative ERS 7.4 · 4.3–10.0

2026-04-22 · Agentic / MCP System

Anthropic MCP STDIO Command Execution: When Tool Configuration Becomes an RCE Primitive

The scoring turns on an evidentiary rule rather than a judgement call: the 0.50 Ro-1 anchor describes this case qualitatively — common attacks resisted, multi-step tool-mediated attacks still effective — but its ASR-below-50% precondition is unmeasured, so the quantitative precondition fails and 0.25 governs; meanwhile Cn-6 = 0.00 is the cleanest reading in the batch, because a system that treats spawning an arbitrary OS process as routine tool setup has an Action Reversibility Classification Rate of exactly zero.

Indicative ERS 5.8 · 3.0–8.6

Use the evidence, not just the incident name

Each record distinguishes observed controls, missing evidence, architecture-based exclusions, operational risk, confidence limits, and the uncertainty interval. When using a case as a reference, compare the documented path to your own system boundary and rerun the applicable test methods rather than copying its indicative ERS.