MCP-Guard: A Defense Framework for Model Context Protocol Integrity in Large Language Model Applications

Abstract: The integration of LLMs with external tools via protocols such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP) introduces critical security vulnerabilities, including prompt injection, data exfiltration, and other threats. To counter these challenges, we propose MCP-Guard, a robust, layered defense architecture designed for LLM--tool interactions. MCP-Guard employs a three-stage detection pipeline that balances efficiency with accuracy: it progresses from lightweight static scanning for overt threats and a deep neural detector for semantic attacks, to our fine-tuned E5-based model achieves (96.01) accuracy in identifying adversarial prompts. Finally, a lightweight LLM arbitrator synthesizes these signals to deliver the final decision while minimizing false positives. To facilitate rigorous training and evaluation, we also introduce MCP-AttackBench, a comprehensive benchmark of over 70,000 samples. Sourced from public datasets and augmented by GPT-4, MCP-AttackBench simulates diverse, real-world attack vectors in the MCP format, providing a foundation for future research into securing LLM-tool ecosystems.