MCP Scan

MCP-Scan is a security scanning tool for MCP servers, used to detect common security vulnerabilities such as prompt injection, tool poisoning, and cross-domain escalation.

Security Developer tools #Security scanning #MCP tool #Vulnerability detection #AI security .Python

rating : 5 points

downloads : 17.2K

update time : 2025-04-29

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What is MCP-Scan?

MCP-Scan is a tool for detecting potential security issues in tools, prompts, and resources on MCP servers. It can identify common security vulnerabilities, such as prompt injection attacks, tool poisoning attacks, and cross-domain escalation attacks.

How to use MCP-Scan?

After running the MCP-Scan command, it will automatically scan your MCP configuration files and generate a report.

Applicable scenarios

Suitable for developers and enterprise users who need to regularly check the security of MCP servers.

Main features

Support for multiple MCP clients

Supports configuration scanning for file-based MCP clients such as Claude, Cursor, and Windsurf.

Detect prompt injection attacks

Detect prompt injection attacks through local checks and by calling the Invariant Guardrails API.

Detect tool poisoning attacks

Detect tool poisoning attacks through tool hash values to prevent MCP tools from being tampered with.

Tool locking function

Lock tools through hash values to prevent them from being accidentally replaced.

Advantages

Quickly detect security issues on MCP servers.

Support configuration for multiple MCP clients.

Enhance detection capabilities through API calls.

Limitations

Requires connection to an external API for advanced detection.

May involve sharing of tool description data.

How to use

Install MCP-Scan

Install the MCP-Scan tool via npm or uvx.

Run a scan

Run the command to scan the MCP configuration files.

View results

Fix any discovered security issues based on the generated report.

Usage examples

Scan default configurations

Scan all known MCP configuration files.

Check specific configurations

Run a scan against a specific configuration file.

Add to whitelist

Add a specific tool to the whitelist.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does MCP-Scan store my data?

How to disable tool poisoning detection?

Which MCP clients does MCP-Scan support?

Related resources

MCP-Scan official documentation

The GitHub repository for MCP-Scan.

Invariant Guardrails

A tool for security detection.

MCP security notification

An article about MCP security issues.

🚀 MCP-Scan: A Security Scanning Tool for MCP

MCP-Scan is a security scanning tool designed to check your installed MCP servers for common security vulnerabilities, such as prompt injection, tool poisoning, and cross-domain escalation.

🚀 Quick Start

Run MCP-Scan using the following commands:

uvx mcp-scan@latest

npx mcp-scan@latest

Example Run

✨ Features

Scan configurations of Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, and other file-based MCP clients.
Scan for prompt injection attacks and tool poisoning attacks using the Guardrail.
Detect cross-domain escalation attacks (Tool Shadow).
Tool Fixation to detect and prevent MCP templating attacks (e.g., detect changes in MCP tools via hashing).
Check the tool descriptions of installed tools through the inspect command (e.g., uvx mcp-scan@latest inspect).

🔧 Technical Details

MCP-Scan traverses your configuration files to find MCP server configurations. Then it connects to these servers and retrieves tool descriptions.

It scans tool descriptions, performing both local checks and Guardrail checks by calling the Invariant Labs API. For this purpose, tool names and descriptions will be shared with invariantlabs.ai. Using MCP-Scan implies your agreement to Invariant Labs' Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Invariant Labs is collecting data for security research purposes (only about tool descriptions and their changes over time, not your user data). If you do not wish to share your tools, please do not use MCP-scan.

MCP-scan does not store or record any usage data, i.e., the content and results of the MCP tools you invoke.

🤝 Contribution

We welcome contributions to MCP-Scan. If you have any suggestions, bug reports, or feature requests, please open an issue on our GitHub repository.

📦 Installation

To run this package from source code, follow these steps:

uv run pip install -e .
uv run -m src.mcp_scan.cli

📚 Incorporating MCP-scan Results into Your Project/Registry

If you wish to incorporate the results of MCP-scan into your own project or registry, please contact the team at mcpscan@invariantlabs.ai, and we can assist you.