⌖ AI Field Guide

Sourced determinations on AI engineering practices · last reviewed 1h ago

  1. Treat MCP servers and tool outputs as an untrusted trust boundary best practice security reviewed 1h ago

    When wiring an agent to MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, treat tool descriptions, schemas, and tool-call results as untrusted input that can carry adversarial instructions ('tool poisoning', indirect prompt injection) -- scope each server to least-privilege credentials, pin/review tool definitions, sandbox local servers, and require human confirmation before sensitive actions.

    Why this verdict?

    This isn't theoretical: researchers have disclosed a steady cadence of MCP CVEs through 2026, including real prompt-injection bugs in an official Anthropic-maintained MCP server, and most organizations experimenting with MCP haven't put it through formal security review before reaching production. OWASP's MCP cheat sheet mitigations (least privilege, definition pinning, sandboxing, human-in-the-loop, treating tool output as untrusted) match what the incident writeups say would have helped.