Memory MCP Server capability laundering: bypassing approval gates through MCP side effects

Capability Laundering in MCP: Anthropic Memory Server to Terminal Hijacking

What Happened Anthropic’s Memory MCP Server is designed to help AI agents remember information across conversations by storing entities in a knowledge graph JSON Lines (JSONL) file. According to its documentation, each entity should only contain name, entityType, and observations. However, the vulnerable implementation accepted and stored additional properties beyond what was documented. That turned “memory persistence” into arbitrary JSON injection, enabling persistent VS Code configuration injection and terminal profile hijacking. ...

December 27, 2025 · 8 min · 1624 words · Aonan Guan