Search: “core-protocol”

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rosbridge_library Protocol.incoming() quadratic CPU cost in JSON fallback

rosbridge_library's Protocol.incoming() has quadratic CPU cost in its JSON fallback, enabling denial of service via crafted messages.

Evgenios Gkritsis disclosed an algorithmic-complexity defect in rosbridge_suite's rosbridge_library Protocol.incoming() JSON fallback path, classified as CWE-407/CWE-1050. The flaw exists in the current ros2 branch and was not removed by PR #1199, having been present since the fallback was introduced. Crafted input can drive quadratic CPU cost and cause denial of service.

oss-security·updated Sep 14, 19:53 UTC · 2d ago·first Sep 14, 18:17 UTC · 2d agoVulnerability 3 sources1

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Closing the Loop: Bidirectional Fully Encrypted Protocols

Researchers show naively composing unidirectional fully encrypted protocols is detectable and construct provably secure bidirectional FEPs, validated in Rust.

The paper introduces formal security definitions for bidirectional fully encrypted protocols (BiFEPs), covering exact shaping, delivery, protocol-state integrity, private half-close, and cross-direction isolation. It shows trivially composing two unidirectional FEPs enables detection attacks via cross-direction dependencies like traffic imbalance and connection tear-down. The authors construct provably secure BiFEPs for datastream and datagram settings, validated with a Rust implementation; no surveyed deployed protocol provides the full set of properties.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 15, 16:32 UTC · 1d agoResearch

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IBIB: A Protocol for Measuring Enterprise AI Systems by Serving Route, Not Model Identifier

IB2 protocol scores enterprise AI systems by serving route with reliability-inclusive scoring; serving-arm choice moved one score from 77.38 to 82.54.

The protocol has three parts: a gold-blind capability-binding preflight verifying a route can execute the evaluation contract, a reliability-inclusive first-pass scoring rule, and structurally score-blind adjudication. Its reference instantiation uses 128 locked tasks and 987 assertions over document, spreadsheet, chart, tool, and database work, released as procedure and schemas rather than an exposed corpus. Across eleven systems, two complete runs on identical weights later failed distinct binding-gate predicates, four of seven suites saturate within a six-system band driven by governed database work and multi-tab joins, and excluding failed responses from denominators changes the point ordering. Serving-arm choice shifted one declared revision and precision from 77.38 to 82.54, though arms differed in access mode, harness generation, and the tool-call parser.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL·Sep 9, 17:31 UTC · 7d agoAI research1

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Honeypot-Omaha and batch.py [Guest Diary], (Wed, Sep 2nd)

A SANS ISC guest diary describes batch.py, a Python tool that consolidates honeypot logs and enriches IOCs with threat intelligence data.

Written by a SANS.edu BACS intern, the diary explains analysis of the DShield Honeypot-Omaha sensor, which uses Cowrie to emulate SSH and Telnet and log attacker activity. The author's batch.py script implements a four-phase pipeline with SHA-256-generated master and guest authentication to consolidate JSON and log files, correlate data via external APIs, and produce MITRE, CVE, geolocation, threat-score and fingerprint enrichment for investigated indicators.

SANS Internet Storm Center·Sep 3, 02:02 UTC · 13d agoTools1

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MicroHasTEE: Bare-Metal Haskell for Type-Level Peripheral Ownership on Armv8-M

MicroHasTEE expresses TrustZone secure and non-secure firmware as one typed Haskell program, catching peripheral-ownership inconsistencies at compile time.

MicroHasTEE is a multiparty Haskell framework that models both TrustZone firmware images as participants in a single typed program, using type-level capability ledgers to track peripheral acquisition, configuration, transfer, and finalization. MicroHs compiles the shared program twice to produce separate bare-metal Secure and Non-secure firmware images. The framework rejects inconsistent resource use, post-configuration attribution changes, wrong-domain callbacks, and calls to unregistered Secure services. A door-lock case study on an STM32U5 Nucleo board produced images of 232.7 KiB and 228.4 KiB of flash with roughly 220 KiB of SRAM per domain.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 11, 08:34 UTC · 5d agoResearch1

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From Intent to Execution Grant: An Execution-Boundary Conformance Profile for High-Risk AI Actions

Researchers specify EBL-Core, an execution-boundary conformance profile binding AI agent intents, policies, and evidence into verifiable execution grants, validated with bounded tests.

The paper defines EBL-Core, a conformance profile deciding whether one fully materialized AI-generated candidate action may receive action-scoped execution authority. It binds a structured intent object, Root and Operational Policies, typed evidence, and a verifiable Decision Derivation through an Execution Release Contract, with lifecycle rules for Redemption and Revocation. Evaluation included 34 static vectors, 15 lifecycle checks, and 100 trials of 32 concurrent Redemption attempts yielding exactly one winner per trial. The authors state these bounded results demonstrate executability of the specified subset, not production readiness or complete mediation.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 10, 14:21 UTC · 6d agoAI safety & security1

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Corero brings cloud-based AI threat analysis to SmartWall ONE

Corero adds cloud-delivered AI analysis to SmartWall ONE for faster DDoS attack identification and automated protection policy generation.

Corero Network Security announced AI-Augmented Cloud-Assist for SmartWall ONE, a cloud-delivered AI layer that analyzes DDoS telemetry, identifies emerging attack behaviors, and recommends protection policies that can be applied manually or automatically within seconds. It creates a continuous intelligence loop between Corero's cloud and on-premises SmartWall ONE deployments, with security experts providing oversight. The feature targets AI data centers, NeoCloud providers, service providers, and digital enterprises requiring low-latency edge mitigation.

Help Net Security·Aug 20, 00:00 UTC · 27d agoTools

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ToolHive: The open-source way to run any MCP server securely

Stacklok's open-source ToolHive runs Model Context Protocol servers in isolated containers with per-request identity enforcement, audit logging and a signed registry.

ToolHive, shipped under Apache 2.0, containersizes MCP servers locally via Docker or Podman or in clusters through a Kubernetes operator, applying permissions, network filtering, and secrets management. The platform includes a Registry Server implementing the official MCP Registry API with signing and provenance verification, a Virtual MCP Server gateway with OIDC/OAuth single sign-on and OpenTelemetry traces, and a desktop Portal for one-click installs. The browser-based cloud UI is retired, so the desktop app and CLI are the supported rollout paths.

Help Net Security·Sep 7, 00:00 UTC · 9d agoAI tools & infra1

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From Specs to Apps: Verifying and Monitoring Models of Signal and WhatsApp

Researchers use the SpecMon runtime monitor to verify WhatsApp Web and Signal Desktop against formal Signal protocol models, finding undocumented libsignal fork differences.

The paper applies SpecMon, a runtime monitoring tool, to check whether executions of WhatsApp Web and Signal Desktop conform to formal models of the Signal protocol. The authors instrument both applications and build Tamarin-compatible multiset-rewrite models, including the first model of WhatsApp Web's implementation and the most detailed model to date of Signal's original protocol. They verify authentication and secrecy properties for core Signal protocol components, show monitoring detects deliberately injected faults with low overhead, and identify previously undocumented behavioral differences between the original libsignal library and WhatsApp's fork.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 10, 17:48 UTC · 6d agoResearch

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Fresh-Challenge VDF Attestations for Model-Relative Response Latency

Fresh-Challenge VDF Attestations bind verifiable delay functions to unpredictable public challenges, yielding succinct evidence of model-relative response latency.

The paper specifies FCLA, a protocol composition that binds a VDF to an unpredictable public challenge, a message, and independently auditable release/receipt records. Under explicit assumptions about VDF sequentiality and a calibrated bound on an adversary's sequential evaluation rate, an accepted transcript is inconsistent with post-challenge generation. A benchmark of the public reference implementation confirms the expected evaluation-versus-verification separation on one documented machine. The contribution is a protocol design analysis, not a new VDF construction.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 11, 11:25 UTC · 5d agoResearch

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Researchers open-source a Wi-Fi cyber range for security training

NTNU and Aegean researchers open-source a software-emulated Wi-Fi cyber range using mac80211_hwsim with LLM-assisted scenario building.

Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the University of the Aegean published a design and prototype for a cyber range dedicated to IEEE 802.11 security training, emulating access points and clients with mac80211_hwsim, Linux namespaces, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, dnsmasq, and FreeRADIUS. The platform bundles Aircrack-ng, Wireshark, and custom tools WPAxFuzz and Bl0ck, and can convert plain-language scenario descriptions into deployable definitions via a locally hosted Llama model. A working prototype covering scenario creation and deployment is on GitHub; monitoring, access control, and orchestration zones remain future work.

Help Net Security·Aug 24, 04:21 UTC · 23d agoTools1

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Lightweight Zero Trust via Automotive SDN

Researchers map automotive SDN with MACsec/MKA and CORECONF/YANG to NIST SP 800-207, satisfying five of seven Zero Trust tenets without added infrastructure.

Zonal in-vehicle networks ship Ethernet, MACsec, and TSN but treat the network itself as trusted, with no standardized runtime way to revoke access, rotate keys, or contain a compromised ECU. The paper first analyzes what Open Alliance TC17 v1.0 MACsec/MKA with pre-shared CAKs already provides against the seven NIST SP 800-207 Zero Trust tenets. It then adds CORECONF/YANG management per Open Alliance TC19, mapping the SDN Controller and Agents one-to-one onto NIST's PE, PA, and PEP, and instantiates a YANG-based network-access-control flow and key-management scheme. The result fully covers five of the seven tenets and partially covers two, without any ZTA-specific infrastructure.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 9, 07:20 UTC · 7d agoResearch

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Agent Harness vs Agent Framework vs MCP: Which Layer Owns the Loop, State, Tools, Permissions, and Recovery

Architecture explainer separates agent harnesses, frameworks, and MCP by which layer owns the loop, state, permissions, and recovery.

The article distinguishes agent harnesses (OpenAI Codex, Claude Agent SDK), which own the execution loop, sandbox, permission model, and recovery; frameworks (LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, Microsoft Agent Framework), which supply composable primitives; and MCP, a stateless JSON-RPC wire protocol governed by the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation since December 2025. An ownership matrix maps the execution loop, state, tool transport, permissions, recovery, sandboxing, and multi-agent orchestration to each layer. The 2026-07-28 MCP specification made the protocol fully stateless, retiring the initialize handshake and session headers.

MarkTechPost·Sep 14, 21:54 UTC · 2d agoAI research1

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IntentFuzz: A Protocol-Aware Fuzzer for Automated Invariant Violation Detection in Intent-Based Cross-Chain Bridges

IntentFuzz protocol-aware fuzzer recovers bridge structure from unannotated Solidity and confirmed 22 invariant violations across 24 real-world deployments.

IntentFuzz formalizes a taxonomy separating invariant violations from settlement exposures in intent-based cross-chain bridges, then recovers a bridge's intent structure and deposit/fill function roles from unannotated Solidity source. It classified deposit and fill functions with 100% recall and 82% combined precision, and achieved 100% recall and precision on 23 planted-bug mutants. Across 24 real-world deployments it confirmed 17 genuine invariant violations with heuristic-only input generation, rising to 22 with its LLM-assisted tier, spanning eight vulnerable GitHub repositories with findings reproducible against public deployed bytecode.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 11, 16:03 UTC · 5d agoResearch1

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How an Emerging Industrial Protocol Family Could Put OT at Risk

New research shows unprotected Time-Sensitive Networking industrial protocols could let attackers disrupt or manipulate physical processes in OT environments.

Research covered by Dark Reading examines an emerging family of industrial protocols based on Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and finds that unprotected implementations could be attacked to disrupt or manipulate physical processes. The findings highlight growing OT risk as these protocols proliferate in industrial deployments; no confirmed exploitation is reported.

Dark Reading·Aug 21, 20:24 UTC · 26d agoResearch

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Rubrik MCP gives AI agents controlled access to security intelligence

Rubrik launched MCP support exposing Rubrik Security Cloud APIs to enterprise AI agents with RBAC, configurable permissions, and OWASP MCP Top 10 guardrails.

Rubrik announced Rubrik MCP (Model Context Protocol), giving organizations' AI agents a secure, programmable path to Rubrik's data, identity, and application intelligence via the Rubrik Security Cloud API schema. Teams can save multi-step recovery or compliance workflows as reusable, deterministic tools, with role-based access control parity and OWASP MCP Top 10 aligned guardrails. Rubrik engineered its agent architecture with Anthropic's teams for multi-step reasoning in incident response, and says Rubrik AI is now trusted by one-third of its global customers.

Help Net Security·10:41 UTC · 11h agoTools1

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Sandworm-Linked Cyclops Blink Returns With Network Scanning and Packet-Sniffing Capabilities

Sophos uncovers a 64-bit Cyclops Blink variant on hacked Cisco FMC appliances, adding internal network scanning and selective packet capture; linked to Sandworm.

Sophos CTU analyzed a new 64-bit x86-64 Cyclops Blink implant (timezone_check) deployed on Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center appliances compromised via CVE-2026-20079 authentication bypass and CVE-2026-20316 low-privileged login. The activity is assessed with high confidence as Russian-nexus, with a moderate-confidence link to Sandworm (IRON VIKING, also tracked as Seashell Blizzard). The implant runs a parent controller plus five worker modules, masquerades as [kworker/0:1], persists via SysV init scripts at /lib/tz/timezone_check, and beacons to hard-coded C2 89.34.96.56 over a custom TLS protocol on ports 43856 and 49172. New module 0x11 scans internal IPv4 networks for SSH, SMB, LDAP, VMware, HTTP/HTTPS and VPN services, while module 0x12 performs filtered packet capture that can expose cleartext credentials, cookies and tokens.

GBHackers·Sep 14, 09:27 UTC · 2d agoMalware in the wild 9 sourcesCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-20316

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Scores Alone Do Not Prove Discovery: The Discovery Certification Protocol for Auditing AI Research Agents

Researchers introduce the Discovery Certification Protocol, an auditable test framework that verifies whether AI research agents' claimed discoveries are genuine.

The Discovery Certification Protocol (DCP) converts AI research agents' discovery claims into executable recovery and feedback tests organized as gated audits. Controlled audits in SQLite optimization and virtual catalyst control produced zero recoveries in 96 episodes, with an upper bound of 0.0468. A deterministic, LLM-free verifier reproduces audit decisions from frozen evidence, giving AI research a common evidence language for outcomes, alternative routes, and feedback effects.

Hugging Face daily papers·Sep 6, 20:00 UTC · 10d agoAI research

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MacOS 27 - First Boot, (Tue, Sep 15th)

SANS ISC documents the expected network traffic macOS 27 'Golden Gate' generates on first boot to help defenders baseline their networks.

Johannes Ullrich of SANS Internet Storm Center captured roughly 300 packets from a macOS 27 'Golden Gate' system before user login, covering DHCP, IPv6 duplicate address discovery, DNS, and TCP behavior. macOS 27 resolves hostnames like albert.apple.com (device activation, certificate-pinned), push messaging hosts, and ipv4only.arpa for NAT64 networks. The OS still uses a TCP window scale of 6, ECN, and random timestamps, with only four TCP connections observed during boot. The analysis provides a reference baseline for security teams monitoring Apple endpoints.

SANS Internet Storm Center·Sep 15, 15:23 UTC · 1d agoResearch

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"They don't care about this": A Systematic Study of TEE Build Reproducibility in the Wild

91% of 115 surveyed TEE deployments across Intel SGX, TDX, and AMD SEV fail to provide reproducible builds needed for verifiable remote attestation.

A systematic study of 115 TEE deployments found 91% were not reproducible and 80% lacked both source code and a reference build, undermining remote attestation guarantees. Interviews with 12 developers of 50 Intel SGX projects confirmed that only one participant treats reproducibility as a development priority. The authors identify technical barriers such as embedded timestamps plus ecosystem-level issues like lack of build-environment control in multi-stakeholder projects, and call for holistic, committed reproducibility practices.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 10, 11:43 UTC · 6d agoResearch

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AWS limits AI agents’ data access, even when manipulated

AWS detailed propagating user authorization context through Bedrock AgentCore so downstream services enforce access controls even if the agent is manipulated via prompt injection.

AWS described an architecture for Amazon Bedrock AgentCore where user tokens and department claims are validated at runtime and propagated to DynamoDB, Bedrock Knowledge Bases, and Salesforce. Downstream services enforce authorization themselves, so a prompt-injected or buggy agent cannot retrieve data the user is not entitled to see. AWS demonstrated the pattern with a CRM use case separating Sales and Finance access and recommends IAM-backed knowledge bases for stricter isolation.

Help Net Security·Aug 20, 00:00 UTC · 27d agoAI safety & security

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UAT-10147 deploys SPECTRE: A cross-platform implant with Linux rootkit and BYOVD capabilities

Cisco Talos identifies UAT-10147 deploying the SPECTRE implant with cross-platform C2, credential theft, and kernel-level EDR bypass.

Cisco Talos reports that the tracked threat actor UAT-10147 is deploying a newly identified implant named SPECTRE. SPECTRE supports cross-platform command-and-control, process injection, credential theft, and anti-analysis protections. It also includes a Linux rootkit and BYOVD (bring your own vulnerable driver) capability enabling kernel-level EDR bypass, marking an evolution in commodity intrusion tooling.

Cisco Talos·Aug 20, 10:00 UTC · 27d agoThreat actor in the wild

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Project CAV3RN continues: Google Apps Script as C2 relay and DNS-based C2 channel selection

Project CAV3RN continues targeting Israel, using Google Apps Script C2 relays and DNS-based channel routing in a .NET NativeAOT framework.

Kaspersky Securelist documents the continuation of Project CAV3RN operations against Israel. The modular .NET NativeAOT framework uses Google Apps Script as a C2 relay and DNS-based C2 channel selection, blending command traffic with legitimate Google services to evade detection.

Kaspersky Securelist·Aug 11, 10:00 UTC · Aug 11, 2026Threat actor in the wild

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Credentialed Pre-Port Discovery: Don't Probe the Host, Ask it

Rapid7's version 8.58 adds credentialed pre-port discovery, letting scan engines query hosts for listening TCP/UDP ports instead of network probing.

Rapid7 documents credentialed pre-port discovery, available from version 8.58 as an off-by-default per-template option under Asset Discovery. The scan engine authenticates with existing SSH, Scan Assistant, or Windows credentials and receives the host's authoritative list of listening TCP and UDP ports, skipping the network port scan. Hosts without matching credentials silently fall back to network port scanning. Trade-offs include reporting firewall-blocked ports the engine cannot reach, longer scans, and early termination findings caused by repeated connection failures.

Rapid7 Blog·Sep 9, 15:16 UTC · 7d agoTools

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BGP Role model: tracking the adoption of RFC 9234

Cloudflare measured RFC 9234 adoption, finding BGP Role deployment growing but two Tier 1 networks unexpectedly stripping the Only to Customer attribute.

Cloudflare analyzed adoption of RFC 9234, which introduces BGP Roles and the Only to Customer (OTC) attribute allowing routers to reject route leaks on their own. The measurement study assessed who has deployed the mechanism in the global routing table. It found two Tier 1 networks unexpectedly stripping OTC attributes, which could undermine leak protection.

Cloudflare Blog·Aug 18, 15:21 UTC · 29d agoResearch

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Keys to the Kingdom: Erlang/OTP SSH Vulnerability Analysis and Exploits Observed in the Wild

Attackers actively exploit CVE-2025-32433, a CVSS 10.0 unauthenticated RCE in Erlang/OTP SSH, heavily targeting OT and critical infrastructure networks.

CVE-2025-32433 enables unauthenticated RCE in Erlang/OTP's SSH daemon via SSH connection protocol messages (codes >= 80) processed before authentication, affecting versions before OTP-27.3.3, OTP-26.2.5.11 and OTP-25.3.2.20. Unit 42 recorded a spike in exploitation between May 1-9, 2025, with 70% of detections on firewalls protecting OT networks, disproportionately affecting healthcare, agriculture, media and high technology. Observed payloads bind TCP-connected shells or launch Bash reverse shells to hosts like 146.103.40.203:6667, with randomized DNS lookups under dns.outbound.watchtowr.com indicating OAST-driven blind RCE validation.

Palo Alto Unit 42·Aug 17, 13:03 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Exploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2025-32433

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Scalable Composition of Byzantine Agreements under Reorder Attacks

Researchers present the first adversary model combining party corruption with channel reordering attacks, establishing tight security thresholds for composed Byzantine agreement protocols.

The paper presents the first adversary model combining party corruption with adversarial channel attacks that reorder messages across multiple Byzantine agreement executions. It proves impossibility results for authenticated BA under parallel composition when n ≤ 3t or n ≤ 2c + 2t + 1, with matching possibility results when n > max{3t, 2c + 2t + 1}. The authors provide general black-box compilers plus erasure-correcting-code variants that achieve constant multiplicative communication overhead for long messages.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 9, 02:35 UTC · 7d agoResearch

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How CHERIoT Provides Strong and Usable Isolation Without an MMU

ACM Queue paper explains how CHERIoT uses CHERI hardware capabilities to give microcontroller-class IoT devices memory and privilege isolation without an MMU.

The ACM Queue article (DOI 10.1145/3831361) describes CHERIoT, a RISC-V-derived platform that scales CHERI capability-based hardware down to small embedded and IoT microcontrollers. It provides strong, fine-grained isolation and memory safety without a memory management unit, aiming to make compartmentalization practical for low-cost devices. The piece emphasizes usability of the isolation model alongside its security guarantees.

Lobsters · security·Sep 10, 14:59 UTC · 6d agoResearch

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How Cloudflare detects MCP traffic and helps secure it

Cloudflare Gateway now detects Model Context Protocol traffic via protocol-level heuristics to expose shadow MCP usage and enforce approved-server access.

Cloudflare Gateway identifies Model Context Protocol (MCP) requests using protocol-level heuristics. Security teams can use the signal to discover shadow MCP traffic on managed networks, enforce Portal-only access for approved MCP servers, and block direct connections. The updates extend standard gateway and zero-trust controls to AI agent traffic.

Cloudflare Blog·Aug 14, 13:12 UTC · Aug 14, 2026Tools

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