Knostic’s research, “Exposing the Unseen: Mapping MCP Servers Across the Internet,” found 1,862 exposed Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, all of which were insecure and allowed unauthenticated access to internal tool listings. This highlights a significant security risk in AI adoption, as sensitive data and functionalities could be exposed. Knostic, founded in 2023 by Gadi Evron and Sounil Yu, provides need-to-know access controls for Large Language Models (LLMs) to ensure safe AI adoption.
Knostic, a leader in AI-based data security, announces the publication of its latest research, “Exposing the Unseen: Mapping MCP Servers Across the Internet”. This study highlights the widespread exposure of Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, revealing significant security flaws that could impact organizations globally.
Knostic’s research team discovered a total of 1,862 MCP servers exposed to the internet. From that set, 119 servers were sampled for manual verification. All 119 servers allowed access to internal tool listings without authentication.
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The study was conducted using Shodan and a suite of custom Python tools. The research team fingerprinted and mapped production MCP servers. All servers discovered in the study were insecure, revealing their capabilities to anyone asking.
Given the rapid adoption of AI technologies, the low quality of the systems themselves, combined with nonexistent security, is certainly worrying. It raises concerns that, as with previous technologies, security will only be introduced after the systems have already been exploited.
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“Our research underscores a pressing issue in AI adoption: security issues will find you if you do not seek them out,” said Gadi Evron, Co-Founder and CEO of Knostic. “Without proper safeguards, organizations risk exposing sensitive data and functionalities to unauthorized users, with potentially severe consequences.”
