A deliberately vulnerable implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for educational purposes.
The Damn Vulnerable Model Context Protocol (DVMCP) is an educational project designed to demonstrate security vulnerabilities in MCP implementations. It contains 10 challenges of increasing difficulty that showcase different types of vulnerabilities and attack vectors.
This project is intended for security researchers, developers, and AI safety professionals to learn about potential security issues in MCP implementations and how to mitigate them.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a standardized protocol that allows applications to provide context for Large Language Models (LLMs) in a structured way. It separates the concerns of providing context from the actual LLM interaction, enabling applications to expose resources, tools, and prompts to LLMs.
CLINE - VSCode Extension refer this https://docs.cline.bot/mcp-servers/connecting-to-a-remote-server for connecting CLine with MCP server
once you have cloned the repository, run the following commands:
docker build -t dvmcp .
docker run -p 9001-9010:9001-9010 dvmcp
While MCP provides many benefits, it also introduces new security considerations. This project demonstrates various vulnerabilities that can occur in MCP implementations, including:
- Prompt Injection: Manipulating LLM behavior through malicious inputs
- Tool Poisoning: Hiding malicious instructions in tool descriptions
- Excessive Permissions: Exploiting overly permissive tool access
- Rug Pull Attacks: Exploiting tool definition mutations
- Tool Shadowing: Overriding legitimate tools with malicious ones
- Indirect Prompt Injection: Injecting instructions through data sources
- Token Theft: Exploiting insecure token storage
- Malicious Code Execution: Executing arbitrary code through vulnerable tools
- Remote Access Control: Gaining unauthorized system access
- Multi-Vector Attacks: Combining multiple vulnerabilities
damn-vulnerable-mcs/
├── README.md # Project overview
├── requirements.txt # Python dependencies
├── challenges/ # Challenge implementations
│ ├── easy/ # Easy difficulty challenges (1-3)
│ │ ├── challenge1/ # Basic Prompt Injection
│ │ ├── challenge2/ # Tool Poisoning
│ │ └── challenge3/ # Excessive Permission Scope
│ ├── medium/ # Medium difficulty challenges (4-7)
│ │ ├── challenge4/ # Rug Pull Attack
│ │ ├── challenge5/ # Tool Shadowing
│ │ ├── challenge6/ # Indirect Prompt Injection
│ │ └── challenge7/ # Token Theft
│ └── hard/ # Hard difficulty challenges (8-10)
│ ├── challenge8/ # Malicious Code Execution
│ ├── challenge9/ # Remote Access Control
│ └── challenge10/ # Multi-Vector Attack
├── docs/ # Documentation
│ ├── setup.md # Setup instructions
│ ├── challenges.md # Challenge descriptions
│ └── mcp_overview.md # MCP protocol overview
├── solutions/ # Solution guides
└── common/ # Shared code and utilities
See the Setup Guide for detailed instructions on how to install and run the challenges.
The project includes 10 challenges across three difficulty levels:
- Basic Prompt Injection: Exploit unsanitized user input to manipulate LLM behavior
- Tool Poisoning: Exploit hidden instructions in tool descriptions
- Excessive Permission Scope: Exploit overly permissive tools to access unauthorized resources
- Rug Pull Attack: Exploit tools that change their behavior after installation
- Tool Shadowing: Exploit tool name conflicts to override legitimate tools
- Indirect Prompt Injection: Inject malicious instructions through data sources
- Token Theft: Extract authentication tokens from insecure storage
- Malicious Code Execution: Execute arbitrary code through vulnerable tools
- Remote Access Control: Gain remote access to the system through command injection
- Multi-Vector Attack: Chain multiple vulnerabilities for a sophisticated attack
See the Challenges Guide for detailed descriptions of each challenge.
Solution guides are provided for educational purposes. It's recommended to attempt the challenges on your own before consulting the solutions.
See the Solutions Guide for detailed solutions to each challenge.
This project is for educational purposes only. The vulnerabilities demonstrated in this project should never be implemented in production systems. Always follow security best practices when implementing MCP servers.
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.
This project is created by Harish Santhanalakshmi Ganesan using cursor IDE and Manus AI.