This vulnerability represents one of the first critical security flaws found in Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) ecosystem, potentially exposing AI developers and organizations to significant cyber threats through browser-based attacks. The flaw affects all versions of MCP Inspector prior to 0.14.1, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code on developers’ machines simply by tricking victims into visiting malicious websites. The malicious code can be embedded in websites, blog posts, or other web content, making the attack vector particularly dangerous for developers who frequently browse technical content online. When developers follow the standard quickstart documentation and run the mcp dev command, the tool launches with default configurations that lack proper authentication mechanisms, creating a significant attack surface. Malicious websites can execute code on victims' machines using the 0.0.0.0-day exploit and CSRF attacks. Major technology companies, including Microsoft and Google, which increasingly rely on MCP-related technologies for AI and cloud services, could be affected if they run vulnerable versions of the inspector tool. The updated version generates unique session tokens by default and includes improved security documentation.
This Cyber News was published on cybersecuritynews.com. Publication date: Wed, 02 Jul 2025 10:15:21 +0000