Analyst Chat #317: MCP Is Just Another API, and That's the Bad News

Right.

If I remember correctly, there was an episode together with Martin, our colleague, Martin Kuppinger, and he said the S in MCP stands for security.

So that is this usual saying that we hear.

On another point, if I remember correctly, you said it's a de facto standard, but it's still coined and created by a vendor, by Anthropic, if I remember correctly.

So...

If there are that many issues, challenges just right now, and it's so heavily used, shouldn't that just be fixed by the owner, by Anthropic?

Well, again, this is a philosophical dispute on its own.

We won't probably touch it in detail.

But basically, yes, Anthropic has come up with the standard, and they created a reference implementation.

So if you are building an MCP server with Python or JavaScript or whatnot, you're probably using the SDK.

And the implementation in that SDK basically has We would call it a vulnerability.

They, of course, call it a design decision.

So they say, yes, we are not doing this on purpose.

Securing your interface is your job anyway.

So we can spend hours or weeks discussing and kind of shifting the blame.

But the more practical approach would be to actually fix it ourselves.

Especially if you consider this is basically a de facto standard.

It's not owned by a single company anymore.

Right, so fair point.

So if we, as you said, if we think of MCP just another tool that gives access to resources, to anything that can be behind such an MCP server, so is it not an MCP vulnerability, in air quotes, but something where we see that it's just the focus point, the crystallization point for security problems that... come from mcp or do not so what is is mcp a new kind of security problem or is it just a new focal point where they happen

well again matthias you are hitting kind of the nail on the head and you are scratching a huge itch i had we discussed it earlier as well like People love inventing new labels for old things because labels sell.

Of course, if you can say, hey, we have just launched an MCP security product, you have to buy to protect yourself from all these fascinating new problems.

Sure, people would fall for it.

But if you are following coping equals year-long kind of advice and say, stop looking at labels, look at functionalities and capabilities behind.

Then yes, MCP is just a new standard, a new protocol, if you will.