Are AI-assisted Development Tools Immune to Prompt Injection?

TL;DR

This paper empirically examines the security vulnerabilities of seven widely used Model Context Protocol clients against prompt injection and tool-poisoning attacks, revealing disparities in their defenses and offering security guidance.

Contribution

First empirical analysis of prompt injection vulnerabilities across real-world MCP clients, evaluating their detection, mitigation, and security feature coverage.

Findings

Some clients like Claude Desktop have strong guardrails.

Others like Cursor are highly susceptible to poisoning and exploitation.

Significant disparities in security measures among MCP clients.

Abstract

Prompt injection is listed as the number-one vulnerability class in the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications that can subvert LLM guardrails, disclose sensitive data, and trigger unauthorized tool use. Developers are rapidly adopting AI-assisted development tools built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP). However, their convenience comes with security risks, especially prompt-injection attacks delivered via tool-poisoning vectors. While prior research has studied prompt injection in LLMs, the security posture of real-world MCP clients remains underexplored. We present the first empirical analysis of prompt injection with the tool-poisoning vulnerability across seven widely used MCP clients: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Continue, Gemini CLI, and Langflow. We identify their detection and mitigation mechanisms, as well as the coverage of security features, including static validation, parameter visibility, injection detection, user warnings, execution sandboxing, and audit logging. Our evaluation reveals significant disparities. While some clients, such as Claude Desktop, implement strong guardrails, others, such as Cursor, exhibit high susceptibility to cross-tool poisoning, hidden parameter exploitation, and unauthorized tool invocation. We further provide actionable guidance for MCP implementers and the software engineering community seeking to build secure AI-assisted development workflows.