According to the Golan Yosef of Pynt, the attack centers on the MCP (Model Context Protocol) architecture, specifically targeting three key components: the Gmail MCP server as an untrusted content source, the Shell MCP server as the execution target, and Claude Desktop functioning as the MCP host. This research highlights the emerging threat of compositional risks in AI systems, where the integration of multiple trusted components can inadvertently create exploitable vulnerabilities that traditional security models fail to address. AI assistant systems were successfully exploited by using a crafted Gmail message to trigger code execution through Claude Desktop while bypassing built-in security protections. Attack succeeded by chaining secure components (Gmail, Claude Desktop, Shell execution) rather than exploiting individual vulnerabilities. The successful exploitation demonstrated that contextual guardrails designed to prevent cross-tool invocation attacks can be systematically undermined through session manipulation and social engineering techniques applied to the AI system itself. Standard component-based security cannot prevent threats from chained AI capabilities and cross-tool interactions. Yosef’s approach leveraged the inherent trust relationships between these components, demonstrating that no individual vulnerability was required for successful exploitation. New security frameworks must assess trust-capability combinations across AI ecosystems, not just isolated systems. This delegation model, while powerful for legitimate use cases, creates opportunities for threat actors to chain together trusted components in unexpected ways. This created a dangerous feedback loop where the AI system’s analytical capabilities were turned against its own security features.
This Cyber News was published on cybersecuritynews.com. Publication date: Wed, 16 Jul 2025 13:25:13 +0000