Deepsleuth — read the fine print

Deepsleuth is a deterministic, no-LLM security scanner for MCP servers. It audits what a server says — and, more importantly, what it does.

Most MCP scanners read only the declared manifest (tools/list names, descriptions, schemas). They never launch the server, never call a tool, never read a response, never read the implementation source, and never reason across calls — so whole classes of attack are structurally invisible to them.

Deepsleuth sees those. It is a single frontend-agnostic detection core with two frontends:

• Frontend A — inline MCP gateway / proxy (the headline artifact). A transparent proxy that is an MCP server to the agent and an MCP client to one downstream server. It audits tool descriptions at startup, enforces a gate before every tools/call, and scans every response before returning it. Includes a headless proxy-eval mode for offline scoring.
• Frontend B — batch / sandbox scanner. A pre-flight auditor that launches a server in a Docker sandbox, actively elicits behavior with synthesized calls + planted canaries, and produces findings. Also the offline scoring harness.

Both frontends run the same detectors over the same Context — a detector is written once and works in both.

No LLM. Ever.

Fully deterministic: parsing, static AST + taint/dataflow, normalized regex/token heuristics, unicode/encoding/entropy analysis, structural diffing, and sandboxed dynamic execution with instrumentation. Same input → byte-identical findings. Offline (no network egress except to the Docker daemon). No threat feeds.

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Install

Python 3.11+. No required third-party packages — the scanner speaks MCP over stdio itself, so it installs in externally-managed (PEP 668) environments.

pip install deepsleuth                                             # published on PyPI
# or from source:
pip install git+https://github.com/DeepSleuth/deepsleuth-mcp.git   # zero required dependencies
deepsleuth --help
# or straight from the source tree:
python -m deepsleuth --help

Deepsleuth is itself an MCP server, so agents can scan with it directly:

{"mcpServers": {"deepsleuth": {"command": "python", "args": ["-m", "deepsleuth.mcp_server"]}}}

Tools: list_detectors, check_listing, scan_target.

Install as an agent plugin

The repo is a valid Agent Plugins package (plugin.json + mcp.json, spec 1.0.0): any compatible client can install it directly from the repository and gets the deepsleuth MCP server plus the audit-mcp-server skill. The stdio entry (bin/deepsleuth-mcp) needs only python3.11+ — the scanner has zero third-party requirements:

{"type": "stdio", "command": "./bin/deepsleuth-mcp"}

For the dynamic layer (Frontend B and proxy-eval) you need the Docker CLI + daemon. Without Docker the scanner degrades gracefully: static/manifest detectors still run and the skipped dynamic coverage is reported (never a crash).

Run

# Frontend B — batch/sandbox scanner (also the offline scoring harness)
python -m deepsleuth scan <target> [--no-dynamic] [--json out.json] [--timeout N] [--reference-listing tools.json]

# Frontend A — inline MCP gateway/proxy (the gate); speaks MCP on stdio to the agent
python -m deepsleuth proxy <target> [--policy policy.yaml] [--fail-closed] [--log run.jsonl]

# Frontend A headless — drive a deterministic call plan through the proxy, emit the findings JSON
python -m deepsleuth proxy-eval <target> [--json out.json] [--timeout N] [--policy p]

# list every registered detector
python -m deepsleuth detectors

<target> can be a server directory (with mcp.json and/or source), an mcp.json launch spec, or a raw stdio launch command (e.g. "python3 server.py"). scan exits 0 when clean and non-zero once a finding reaches --fail-severity (default high).

--allow-unsandboxed runs the dynamic layer without Docker — use it only for your own trusted fixtures, never on untrusted servers.

--reference-listing tools.json supplies another server's tool list (a JSON array of {name, description, inputSchema} entries, or an object with a tools key) so the cross-server name comparison runs against it without launching a second server. The same comparison also runs automatically across several entries in one mcp.json and across several server entry modules found in one directory.

Wire the proxy into an agent

Point your MCP client at the proxy instead of the real server; the proxy launches the real one downstream:

{ "mcpServers": {
    "guarded-fs": {
      "command": "python", "args": ["-m", "deepsleuth", "proxy",
        "/path/to/real-server", "--policy", "policy.example.yaml", "--log", "gate.jsonl"]
    } } }

Try it on the bundled fixtures

python -m deepsleuth scan tests/fixtures/injection --no-dynamic          # source taint + hint violation
python -m deepsleuth scan tests/fixtures/poisoned  --no-dynamic          # poisoned descriptions
python -m deepsleuth scan tests/fixtures/supplychain --no-dynamic        # install-time hook + typosquat
python -m deepsleuth proxy-eval tests/fixtures/runtime --allow-unsandboxed  # response injection + cross-call leak, with gate decisions
python tests/run_all.py                                                    # unit + e2e tests (no pytest needed)

What it covers

Evidence locations — deepsleuth detects across all eight, with special strength on the five a manifest-only scanner misses:

Evidence location	Manifest-only sees it?	deepsleuth
description, name, schema	yes	✅ normalized mechanism rules + obfuscation
source	no	✅ AST taint, hint-vs-behavior, rug-pull gates, auth/audit
runtime-response	no	✅ response-injection + canary/credential leak scan
multi-call-state	no	✅ cross-call canary leakage, re-list diff, response diff
server-identity	rarely	✅ handshake vs. config/package identity
install-time-script	no	✅ npm/pip install-hook + typosquat analysis

Mechanism categories: tool-poisoning, agent-config-poisoning, tool-shadowing, prompt-injection, credential-exposure, command-injection, path-traversal, ssrf, data-exfiltration, confused-deputy, auth-misconfiguration, denial-of-service, excessive-privilege, supply-chain, information-disclosure, client-side-vulnerability, other.

Every finding validates against the fixed finding schema, carries a top-level evidence_location and confidence, and (from the proxy) records its gate decision on raw.gate_decision. See DETECTORS.md for one entry per detector including its known blind spots, and ARCHITECTURE.md for how the layers fit and how to add a detector.

Known limitations (v1)

• Source analysis is Python-first. Node/TS servers get manifest + install-hook
  • dynamic coverage, but source taint is Python-only in v1 (JS is regex-lite).
• Taint is intra-procedural. Flows through helper functions/classes across the module are approximated, not fully tracked.
• The proxy fronts exactly one downstream server (v1 scope; multi-server namespacing is structured for but not built).
• The live proxy's elicitation round-trip and forwarding of downstream-initiated requests are best-effort. All gate/audit/diff/response logic is fully exercised by proxy-eval, which is what the offline evaluator scores.
• Without Docker, dynamic detectors are skipped (reported, not silent).

Getting involved

Contributions welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md. Found a security issue? Please follow SECURITY.md.

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Listed in the official MCP Registry:

mcp-name: io.github.DeepSleuth/deepsleuth