// GLOSSARY

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

An open protocol for establishing a standard, two-way connection between AI models and external tools, data sources and systems. Its significance comes from an architectural threshold: MCP gives the model not just information but the capacity to act; the model is no longer a passive component producing an answer to a question but an actor that can touch external systems, run queries, read files and trigger operations. This transformation brings a new attack surface along with capability. In the Generative AI Red Team scope the MCP chain, that is, authorization, user consent, token management, session control and tool exposure, is assessed as a separate abuse surface. The typical risk is this: when the authority boundary of a tool bound to the model is drawn too wide, a model hijacked through indirect prompt injection can perform a real action through that tool. So the vulnerability is not in the model itself but at the boundary of the authority given to it. The OWASP LLM Top 10 heading on excessive agent autonomy frames this risk; the abuse path often passes through here.