OWASP Flags MCP and AI Package Hallucinations as Emerging Supply Chain Risks

OWASP has published a beta Top 10 for Model Context Protocol (MCP), warning that MCP-enabled AI systems introduce new attack surfaces across token handling, privilege management, tool integrity, supply chain security, command execution, authentication, telemetry, shadow deployments, and context sharing. The project frames MCP as a fast-growing integration layer for AI tools and agents, and highlights the need for stronger controls as organizations connect models to external tools, data sources, and developer workflows.

Security researchers and vendors are also warning that AI is expanding software supply chain risk through package hallucinations and slopsquatting, in which attackers register malicious packages under names invented by coding assistants. One cited proof of concept involved the hallucinated package huggingface-cli, which was later downloaded more than 30,000 times after publication as a benign placeholder. Researchers say autonomous coding agents can amplify the danger by installing dependencies with little or no human review, while related risks include malicious package campaigns, secret leakage in AI-generated code, and broader compromise of developer environments and software delivery pipelines.