Imagine an autonomous AI agent tasked with a simple job: generating a weekly sales report. It does this reliably every Monday. But one week, it doesn’t just create the report. It also queries the customer database, exports every single record, and sends the file to an unknown external server.
Your firewalls saw nothing wrong. Your API gateway logged a series of seemingly valid calls. So, what happened?
The agent wasn’t hacked. Its mind was changed.
As AI evolves from simple copilots to autonomous agents, they operate using a persistent “mental state” that directs their behavior. This operational context is the new, invisible attack surface that most security teams can’t see.
Introducing the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
To describe this bundle of instructions and goals, a new concept is needed. We call it the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Think of MCP as an agent’s digital mission briefing. It’s not a single command, but a complete set of operating instructions that defines the agent’s entire purpose and limitations.
This mission briefing tells the agent everything it needs to know:
- Its Goal: What it’s supposed to accomplish (e.g., “Generate the weekly sales report for the EU region”).
- Its Tools: The specific APIs and functions it’s allowed to use (e.g., “query the sales database” and “create PDF files”).
- Its Role: The identity and permissions it operates with (e.g., a “sales analyst” with limited access).
- Its Memory: Important notes from past actions (e.g., “last report was sent on Monday”).
- Its Constraints: The hard rules it must never break (e.g., “do not access sensitive customer information”).
This briefing is the agent’s brain. It follows these instructions precisely. But what happens if an attacker gets to be the one writing the instructions?
The Attack: A Poisoned Mission
Because the MCP is the driver for every action, hijacking it is the ultimate goal for an attacker. This is context poisoning.
Imagine an attacker intercepts that mission briefing before the agent reads it.
- They cross out the original goal and write a new one: “Export all customer records.“
- They upgrade the agent’s role from “sales analyst” to “d
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