MCP Connector 1.7 - Applying Security to the MCP Server

MCP Connector enables server-side authentication for MCP clients. In these examples, it uses the stateful Server-Sent Events (SSE) connection and the On New Session Listener source to implement custom security logic, including OAuth access token validation.

The SSE server transport (<mcp:sse-server-connection>) is supported only in single-replica deployments. For multi-replica deployments, use Streamable HTTP server transport (<mcp:streamable-http-server-connection>).

Configure Elicitations for Multi-Replica Deployments

When using Streamable HTTP in multi-replica deployments, configure Elicitations Object Store with a distributed object store so elicitation responses can be routed back to the replica that initiated the request.

Elicitation Polling Seconds controls how often the initiating replica polls the shared store for cross-replica responses. Keep this interval shorter than the elicitation timeout and tune it based on load and latency requirements.

Server-Side Authentication With On New Session Listener

The MCP specification emphasizes session management and SSE connections maintain state. The On New Session Listener source offers a key point for implementing server-side authentication. This example illustrates a basic flow triggered by this listener, showing how to access the auto-generated sessionId and the HTTP headers sent by the connecting client, which can then be used for custom authentication logic.

This is an example flow that uses the On New Session Listener source:

<flow name="onNewSession">
   <mcp:on-new-session-listener config-ref="MCP_Server"/>

   <logger level="INFO" message="#['new session id: $(payload.sessionId)']"/>
   <logger level="INFO" message="#['http headers:  $(payload.additionalProperties)']"/>
</flow>

The flow executes each time a new client connects to the MCP server application. The payload contains the auto-generated sessionId and the additionalProperties, which when using the SSE connection type, maps to the request HTTP headers.

At this point, you can implement your own authentication logic. For instance, the #[payload.additionalProperties.authorization] expression gets the HTTP authorization header, which you can validate later.

Validate OAuth Access Tokens

Optionally, you can use the Mule OAuth 2.0 Provider to implement and validate OAuth access tokens.

In this example flow, the access token is validated using the OAuth provider, and the session is rejected if the token is invalid:

<flow name="onNewSession">
  <mcp:on-new-session-listener config-ref="MCP_Server">
<mcp:rejection rejectWithStatusCode="#[vars.rejectStatusCode]" rejectWithMessage="#[vars.rejectMessage]" />
  </mcp:on-new-session-listener>
  <oauth2-provider:validate-token scopes="#[['PUBLIC_READ']]" config-ref="external-oauth2-provider" accessToken="#[payload.additionalProperties.authorization]"/>
        <error-handler>
                <on-error-continue type="OAUTH2-PROVIDER:TOKEN_UNAUTHORIZED">
                    <set-variable variableName="rejectWithStatusCode" value="401" />
                    <set-variable variableName="rejectWithMessage" value="#[error.description]" />
                </on-error-continue>
            </error-handler>
</flow>

The new session is rejected if either of these things happen:

The rejectWithStatusCode parameter is assigned a non-null value (or an expression that resolves to a non-null value), or
The flow fails, in which case a status code 500 is reported.

In this example, the OAuth validation error is handled so that the status code is mapped to a 401 - UNAUTHORIZED code.

Client-Side Authentication

In the client, the authentication parameter accepts all the authentication strategies defined in HTTP Connector, and OAuth Module if it’s also added to the project.

Operations like Call Tool also accept additional properties, which map to request headers. This behavior makes it possible to add custom authentication headers like API keys, for example:

<mcp:call-tool config-ref="MCP_GMaps_Client" toolName="maps_geocode">
    <mcp:arguments ><![CDATA[#[output application/java
---
{
	address: payload.address
}]]]></mcp:arguments>
<mcp:additional-properties ><![CDATA[
#[output application/java
---
{
	"API_KEY" : p('api.key')
}]]]>
</mcp:additional-properties>
</mcp:call-tool>

Next Step

After you configure the connector, you can try the Examples.