Auditing MCP Servers for Over-Privileged Tool Capabilities

Abstract: The Model Context Protocol (MCP) has emerged as a standard for connecting LLMs to external tools and data. However, MCP servers often expose privileged capabilities, such as file system access, network requests, and command execution that can be exploited if not properly secured. We present mcp-sec-audit, an extensible security assessment toolkit designed specifically for MCP servers. It implements static pattern matching for Python-based MCP servers and dynamic sandboxed fuzzing and monitoring via Docker and eBPF. The tool detects risky capabilities through configurable rule-based analysis and provides mitigation recommendations.