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Equation 16 · How Tool Protocols and the Model Context Protocol Actually Work

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Tt\mathcal{T}_t

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Tt\mathcal{T}_t

Symbol T_t

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subscript

subscript

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None of the mechanisms above stop a server from writing a dishonest description . Invariant Labs’ April 2025 disclosure of what it named tool poisoning attacks demonstrated exactly that gap: a tool description can carry hidden instructions inside it — in their proof of concept, wrapped in an <IMPORTANT> tag — that a model reads in full as part of Tt\mathcal{T}_t while a host’s simplified UI shows the user only a short summary. Their working example was an innocuous-looking addition tool whose hidden instructions told the model to read local SSH keys and configuration files and smuggle their contents out through an unrelated parameter, while producing a normal-looking response to the user [ 7 ]…
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None of the mechanisms above stop a server from writing a dishonest description . Invariant Labs’ April 2025 disclosure of what it named tool poisoning attacks demonstrated exactly that gap: a tool description can carry hidden instructions inside it — in their proof of concept, wrapped in an <IMPORTANT> tag — that a model reads in full as part of Tt\mathcal{T}_t while a host’s simplified UI shows the user only a short summary. Their working example was an innocuous-looking addition tool whose hidden instructions told the model to read local SSH keys and configuration files and smuggle their contents out through an unrelated parameter, while producing a normal-looking response to the user [ 7 ] . Nothing about that violates the wire format. The description field is a string; the protocol delivers it faithfully; the attack lives entirely in the fact that the model reads the whole string and a human typically does not.

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