MODEL CONTEXT PROTOCOL (MCP) AND SUPPLY-CHAIN SECURITY

ORIGIN AUTHENTICATION AND TRUST BETWEEN SERVERS Origin authentication means proving where something really came from. When you receive a letter, a signature and a seal tell you who sent it. For an MCP server, the harness can check a cryptographic signature, a mathematical proof of identity, or can connect only to servers at addresses it already trusts. This prevents impersonation, where a fake server pretends to be the official one. Trust between multiple servers needs care too. When an agent connects to several servers at once, one untrusted server might try to influence how the agent uses a trusted server, such as by tool shadowing. Good practice is to give each server only the access it needs, keep their data separate, and never let one server's text act as instructions about another. Also, pin versions. Pinning means locking a server or package to a specific reviewed version and alerting if it changes, which defends against the rug pull described in Chapter 38.