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Browse by hub: AI agent threats · Conventional watchlist · OWASP Agentic Top 10
Showing 20 of 129 threats
AWS HealthOmics MCP Server's linting tools failed to properly restrict pathnames, allowing an actor who can influence the MCP agent's workflow_files input to write attacker-controlled content outside the intended workflow bundle directory via directory traversal sequences. This is a classic path traversal vulnerability exposed through an MCP tool interface rather than a novel agent-specific attack, and is fixed in version 0.0.36.
A concurrency flaw in IBM Cognos Analytics' Agentic AI assistant causes incorrect report summaries or processing failures when multiple authenticated users submit report tasks at the same time. This is a reliability/integrity bug rather than an exploitable attacker-controlled takeover primitive, though it could be leveraged to degrade service or corrupt report outputs relied on for decision-making.
This is a follow-up disclosure from Embrace The Red detailing how an LLM agent that outputs untrusted content into a macOS Terminal could be leveraged to trigger DNS requests via crafted ANSI escape sequences, effectively exfiltrating data through DNS lookups. Apple has since fixed the underlying macOS Terminal behavior, so this report documents a resolved vulnerability rather than an active ongoing threat. Severity is moderate given the fix is already deployed, but the technique remains relevant for agents/tools still rendering raw terminal output without sanitization.
Academic research demonstrates that malicious instructions planted inside persistent memory files (used by agentic coding assistants like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex for cross-session context) can influence and hijack future agent sessions. This is a controlled research study, not an observed in-the-wild exploit, but it highlights a real and underexplored attack surface as agents adopt long-term memory.
AWS Bedrock AgentCore Python SDK versions 1.4.8 and 1.5.0 logged raw user prompts and full agent responses into OpenTelemetry span attributes without any filtering or masking, which then flowed into customer CloudWatch aws/spans log groups. Any principal with read access to those logs could view sensitive user content, including secrets or PII that may have been part of prompts or agent outputs. This is a data exposure issue rather than an active exploit, and requires local/authenticated access to the customer's own logging infrastructure.
The Apify MCP server's documentation-fetching tool checked allowed domains using a naive string prefix match instead of proper URL hostname parsing, letting an attacker craft URLs like docs.apify.com.evil.com to bypass the allowlist. This allows arbitrary attacker-controlled content to be fetched and returned to the LLM agent, which could then be used to inject malicious instructions or exfiltrate context. The issue was fixed in version 0.9.21.
The dbt-mcp server, prior to 1.17.1, sent full unredacted MCP tool call arguments—including raw SQL queries, variables, and node selection strings—to a third-party telemetry backend by default. Because usage tracking was enabled unless explicitly disabled via environment variables, organizations may have unknowingly leaked sensitive query content and internal data model details. This is a legitimate but low-complexity data exposure issue, not a remote code execution or agent-hijack vulnerability.
The dbt-mcp MCP server, prior to version 1.17.1, failed to sanitize client-supplied node_selection and resource_type values before passing them as dbt CLI arguments. Although the use of shell=False blocks shell metacharacter injection, an MCP client could still smuggle dbt global flags like --profiles-dir, --project-dir, or --target into the subprocess call, allowing unauthorized redirection of dbt execution context.
This is an academic research paper (arXiv, not an active exploit) introducing SkillSec-Eval, a framework for evaluating security risks across the full lifecycle of reusable LLM agent 'skills' — from repository admission through retrieval, planner selection, execution, and evolution. The authors evaluated 327 real-world skills and found vulnerabilities exist beyond just runtime execution, suggesting attackers could poison skills at earlier stages like publishing or ranking to influence which skills agents select and trust.
A flaw in n8n-MCP's multi-tenant HTTP mode allowed an authenticated tenant to access or delete workflow-version backups belonging to the default scope rather than being confined to their own tenant. This could expose or destroy legacy backup data left over from prior single-tenant deployments or migrations. The issue is fixed in version 2.57.4.
The deprecated WebSocket transport in the MCP Python SDK accepted connections without validating Host or Origin headers, meaning any malicious webpage a victim's browser visits could open a WebSocket connection to a locally or network-exposed MCP server. This is a classic Cross-Site WebSocket Hijacking (CSWSH) pattern that could let an attacker-controlled origin interact with an MCP server's tools on behalf of an unwitting user. Severity is moderated because the affected transport is deprecated and impact depends on what the exposed server can do and whether it's reachable from a browser context.
The mastergo-magic-mcp MCP server (versions up to 0.2.0) contains a server-side request forgery vulnerability in its getComponentLink tool, caused by insufficient validation of the url argument passed to a z.string schema check. A remote attacker can supply a crafted URL to make the MCP server issue requests to arbitrary internal or external endpoints. A public exploit exists and the vendor has not yet responded to the disclosure.
This is an academic benchmark paper (NetInjectBench), not an active exploit, demonstrating that LLM agents used for network operations can be manipulated via indirect prompt injection embedded in tickets, alerts, logs, and ChatOps messages to trigger unsafe tool actions. The researchers show naive agents execute unsafe actions 82.5% of the time under attack, but a metadata-aware execution-time policy gate can reduce this to near-zero while preserving usefulness. The severity is rated medium because this is defensive research quantifying and mitigating a known risk class rather than a disclosed vulnerability in a specific deployed product.
This is an academic research paper, not an active exploit or attack. The authors built MCPZoo, a large dataset of runnable MCP servers, and found that existing MCP security scanners are unreliable: they flag ~97% of servers as risky, but fewer than half of sampled alerts are true positives, and different scanners disagree substantially with each other.
AstrBot's dashboard MCP connection test feature allows an attacker to supply an arbitrary URL that the server will fetch, resulting in server-side request forgery (SSRF). This could let an attacker probe internal networks, hit cloud metadata endpoints, or pivot against internal services from the AstrBot server. Exploit details are public and the vendor has not responded, increasing real-world risk.
A Drupal contributed module named 'AI Agents' has an access control flaw that allows forceful browsing, meaning unauthorized users may reach pages or functionality they shouldn't have access to. This is a standard web application authorization bug rather than a novel AI agent security issue, and no evidence in the data suggests prompt injection, tool poisoning, or agent-to-agent exploitation. Severity is moderate given the lack of CVSS score and limited detail on what functionality is exposed.
A Drupal contributed module called 'AI Agents' has a missing authorization vulnerability allowing forceful browsing, meaning certain pages or endpoints may be accessible without proper permission checks. This is a standard web application access-control flaw in a CMS module that happens to relate to AI agent functionality, rather than a novel AI-specific attack technique. Severity is moderate since exploitation depends on the module's deployment and what functionality is exposed without authorization.
PraisonAI's built-in prompt injection defense only blocks attacks rated CRITICAL, which requires three or more detector families to agree. This leaves a gap where cleverly crafted single- or double-vector injections score as HIGH and slip through untouched, reaching the underlying model. The flaw is a detection logic weakness rather than a full bypass of all protections, making it moderately severe.
The self-hosted HTTP transport of the DeepSeek MCP Server exposes the /mcp endpoint without any authentication, allowing any network-reachable client to initialize a session, enumerate tools, and invoke server-side functionality. This includes the deepseek_chat tool, which can consume the operator's own DEEPSEEK_API_KEY, leading to unauthorized API usage and potential cost/data exposure. The issue is patched in version 1.8.0.
This is a defensive research paper (not an active exploit) analyzing taint-style vulnerabilities in MCP server implementations, where untrusted input flows into dangerous sinks like command execution or file access. The authors propose SPELLSMITH, a mitigation that uses enhanced tool descriptions and LLM self-reflection to reduce exploitation risk without requiring code-level fixes. Severity is medium since it documents a real and underexplored class of vulnerabilities in deployed MCP servers, but the source itself is a proactive defense proposal rather than a disclosed active attack.