An authenticated authorization bypass vulnerability exists in MCP Toolbox for Databases due to missing scope enforcement across older protocol handlers.
While the 2025-11-25 protocol version handler correctly enforces per-tool restrictions defined by scopesRequired, older supported protocol versions (2025-06-18, 2025-03-26, and 2024-11-05) omit this check. An authenticated client with low-privilege tokens (e.g., read) can bypass the intended per-tool scope restrictions and execute high-privilege tools (e.g., admin) simply by specifying an older protocol version in the MCP-Protocol-Version header, or by omitting the header entirely (which causes the server to default to the vulnerable 2024-11-05 handler).
Weakness
The product does not perform an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action.
Potential Mitigations
- Divide the product into anonymous, normal, privileged, and administrative areas. Reduce the attack surface by carefully mapping roles with data and functionality. Use role-based access control (RBAC) [REF-229] to enforce the roles at the appropriate boundaries.
- Note that this approach may not protect against horizontal authorization, i.e., it will not protect a user from attacking others with the same role.
- Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
- For example, consider using authorization frameworks such as the JAAS Authorization Framework [REF-233] and the OWASP ESAPI Access Control feature [REF-45].
- For web applications, make sure that the access control mechanism is enforced correctly at the server side on every page. Users should not be able to access any unauthorized functionality or information by simply requesting direct access to that page.
- One way to do this is to ensure that all pages containing sensitive information are not cached, and that all such pages restrict access to requests that are accompanied by an active and authenticated session token associated with a user who has the required permissions to access that page.