Pith. sign in

REVIEW 11 cited by

Enterprise-Grade Security for the Model Context Protocol (MCP): Frameworks and Mitigation Strategies

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2504.08623 v2 pith:KQOFGD5V submitted 2025-04-11 cs.CR cs.AI

Enterprise-Grade Security for the Model Context Protocol (MCP): Frameworks and Mitigation Strategies

classification cs.CR cs.AI
keywords securityanalysismitigationactionablecontextenterprise-gradeframeworkframeworks
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

The Model Context Protocol (MCP), introduced by Anthropic, provides a standardized framework for artificial intelligence (AI) systems to interact with external data sources and tools in real-time. While MCP offers significant advantages for AI integration and capability extension, it introduces novel security challenges that demand rigorous analysis and mitigation. This paper builds upon foundational research into MCP architecture and preliminary security assessments to deliver enterprise-grade mitigation frameworks and detailed technical implementation strategies. Through systematic threat modeling and analysis of MCP implementations and analysis of potential attack vectors, including sophisticated threats like tool poisoning, we present actionable security patterns tailored for MCP implementers and adopters. The primary contribution of this research lies in translating theoretical security concerns into a practical, implementable framework with actionable controls, thereby providing essential guidance for the secure enterprise adoption and governance of integrated AI systems.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 11 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Parasites in the Toolchain: A Large-Scale Analysis of Attacks on the MCP Ecosystem

    cs.CR 2025-09 unverdicted novelty 8.0

    This paper defines a new Parasitic Toolchain Attack pattern (MCP-UPD) that assembles legitimate tools into privacy-exfiltrating workflows and reports the first large-scale scan of 12230 MCP tools across 1360 servers r...

  2. Model Context Protocol (MCP) at First Glance: Studying the Security and Maintainability of MCP Servers

    cs.SE 2025-06 conditional novelty 8.0

    First study of 1,899 MCP servers finds eight distinct vulnerabilities (only three traditional), 7.2% with general issues, 5.5% with tool poisoning, and 66% with code smells, urging MCP-specific security practices.

  3. ShareLock: A Stealthy Multi-Tool Threshold Poisoning Attack Against MCP

    cs.CR 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    ShareLock applies Shamir's threshold scheme to distribute poisoning payloads across multiple MCP tool descriptions, achieving information-theoretic secrecy and over 90% average attack success rate in multi-tool scenarios.

  4. From Component Manipulation to System Compromise: Understanding and Detecting Malicious MCP Servers

    cs.CR 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Presents a component-centric PoC dataset of malicious MCP servers and a two-stage behavioral deviation detector Connor achieving 94.6% F1-score.

  5. AgentBound: Securing Execution Boundaries of AI Agents

    cs.CR 2025-10 conditional novelty 7.0

    AgentBound is the first declarative access control framework for Model Context Protocol servers that generates policies from source code at 80.9% accuracy and blocks most threats in malicious servers with negligible overhead.

  6. From Legacy Documentation to OSCAL: An MCP-Based Agent Pipeline for Threat-Informed Continuous Compliance in Critical Infrastructure

    cs.CR 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    An MCP-grounded eight-phase agent pipeline converts natural-language critical-infrastructure descriptions into source-verified knowledge graphs and schema-valid OSCAL SSP/SAR artifacts, with 0.90 CVE recall on a synth...

  7. A Formal Security Framework for MCP-Based AI Agents: Threat Taxonomy, Verification Models, and Defense Mechanisms

    cs.CR 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    MCPSHIELD offers a threat taxonomy of 23 attack vectors, a labeled transition system verification model, and a defense-in-depth architecture claiming 91% coverage for MCP-based AI agents.

  8. Combating Data Laundering in LLM Training

    cs.CR 2026-04 conditional novelty 6.0

    Data laundering collapses original-query memorization detectors; SDR recovers useful detection signals by synthesizing training-like rewrites of proprietary data via a goal-details search.

  9. Semantic Attacks on Tool-Augmented LLMs: Securing the Model Context Protocol Against Descriptor-Level Manipulation

    cs.CR 2025-12 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Descriptor-level manipulation in the Model Context Protocol can drive LLMs to unsafe tool selections in up to 36% of cases; a layered defense of integrity checks, auxiliary-LLM vetting, and runtime guardrails reduces ...

  10. Understanding How Enterprises Adopt the Model Context Protocol for LLM-Driven Software Engineering

    cs.SE 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Interviews with 20 practitioners show MCP supports cross-system collaboration and task decoupling in LLM workflows but is limited by ecosystem fragmentation, coordination issues, and state management problems.

  11. Security Threat Modeling for Emerging AI-Agent Protocols: A Comparative Analysis of MCP, A2A, Agora, and ANP

    cs.CR 2026-02 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    The paper identifies twelve protocol-level security risks across MCP, A2A, Agora, and ANP and quantifies wrong-provider tool execution risk in MCP via a measurement-driven case study on multi-server composition.