Vulnerability Registry MCP Server

Author: Or Cohen

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that wraps a legacy vulnerability database and exposes it as tools for any MCP-compatible LLM client. Built as a smart access layer over custom pipe-delimited data files, enabling security analysts to query vulnerabilities using natural language.

Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• Claude Desktop (or any MCP-compatible client)

Setup

git clone https://github.com/orcohen5/vulnerability-registry.git
cd vulnerability-registry
npm install
npm run build

Connect to Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop config (%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vulnerability-registry": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": [
        "<FULL_PATH>/vulnerability-registry/dist/index.js",
        "<FULL_PATH>/vulnerability-registry/data"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Replace <FULL_PATH> with the absolute path to the cloned repository.

Restart Claude Desktop, then ask:

"What MCP tools do you have for vulnerabilities?"

Claude Desktop discovering all 6 vulnerability registry tools

Available Tools

Tool	Description	Key Parameters	Example Query
list_vendors	List all registered software vendors	category (optional)	"Show me all open source vendors"
get_vendor	Find a vendor by ID or name	vendor_id, name	"Find the vendor ID for Linux Kernel"
search_vulnerabilities	Search with flexible filters	severity, status, min_cvss, keyword, published_after	"Show critical open vulnerabilities"
get_vulnerability	Get full CVE details	cve_id	"What is the CVSS score of Log4Shell?"
get_vulnerability_stats	Aggregate statistics	vendor_id (optional)	"How many vulnerabilities by severity?"
get_vendor_risk_summary	Vendor risk profile	vendor_id	"Show me Microsoft's risk profile"

Example Queries

"How many critical vulnerabilities are still open?"

Uses search_vulnerabilities with severity: "critical" and status: "open".

"What is the CVSS score of Log4Shell?"

Uses get_vulnerability with cve_id: "CVE-2021-44228".

"Show me the risk profile for Microsoft"

Uses get_vendor_risk_summary with vendor_id: "V1".

"Which vulnerabilities were found in Linux Kernel after 2022?"

This query demonstrates multi-tool orchestration — Claude first calls list_vendors to resolve "Linux Kernel" to vendor ID V5, then calls search_vulnerabilities with vendor_id: "V5" and published_after: "2022-01-01".

Architecture

┌─────────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐
│  Claude Desktop │────▶│  MCP Server  │────▶│  Data Files  │
│  (MCP Client)   │◀────│  (stdio)     │◀────│  (.db)       │
└─────────────────┘     └──────┬───────┘     └──────────────┘
                               │
                    ┌──────────┼──────────┐
                    ▼          ▼          ▼
               tools.ts   repository.ts  parser.ts
              (MCP layer)  (query engine) (file reader)

The codebase follows a strict three-layer separation:

• parser.ts — Reads the custom pipe-delimited format dynamically. Knows nothing about MCP.
• repository.ts — In-memory data store with indexed Maps for O(1) lookups. Knows nothing about MCP.
• tools.ts — Registers MCP tools using the high-level McpServer API. Translates between MCP and the repository.

This means swapping the data source (files → database) requires changing only parser.ts, with zero changes to the MCP layer.

Design Decisions

Dynamic metadata parsing — The file parser reads column names from the # FORMAT: header at runtime rather than hardcoding field positions. Combined with version checking (# VERSION: 1.0), this ensures the server can detect and warn about format changes without code modifications.

Repository pattern with in-memory indexing — Data is loaded once at startup and indexed into multiple Maps (vendorById, vulnByCveId, vulnsByVendor, vulnsBySeverity, vulnsByStatus). Primary lookups are O(1). Filtered searches start from the smallest indexed subset and intersect, making combined queries efficient even at scale.

High-level McpServer API — Uses McpServer.registerTool() with Zod schemas for type-safe input validation, rather than the low-level Server class with manual JSON Schema definitions and request routing.

Flexible search with optional filters — search_vulnerabilities accepts all parameters as optional, allowing any combination. One tool handles queries from "show all critical" to "find Linux CVEs from 2023 with CVSS above 8". Results are always sorted by CVSS score (highest first) so the most severe issues appear first.

Enriched responses — get_vulnerability returns the full vendor object alongside the CVE data. get_vendor_risk_summary includes the list of open vulnerabilities. This reduces the number of tool calls the LLM needs to answer common questions.

Strict type safety — Severity and Status are union types derived from as const arrays, with runtime type guards (isSeverity, isStatus). The same source-of-truth arrays feed both TypeScript types and Zod enum validators.

Known Data Anomalies

While working with the source data files, I identified at least one attribution inconsistency: CVE-2024-21762 (Fortinet SSL VPN OOB) is mapped to vendor V4 (Google) in vulnerabilities.db, although this is a Fortinet vulnerability. The server faithfully returns the data as stored — correcting source data is out of scope for a read-only query layer. In a production system, I would add a data validation step at load time to flag such inconsistencies for human review, possibly by cross-referencing the NVD API for canonical vendor attribution.

What I'd Build With More Time

• SQLite/PostgreSQL persistence — Replace in-memory storage for datasets that exceed available RAM, with connection pooling for concurrent access.
• Pagination — Add limit/offset parameters to search_vulnerabilities for large result sets.
• Fuzzy text search — Levenshtein distance matching on vulnerability titles for typo-tolerant queries.
• NVD API integration — Automatic CVE data updates from NIST's National Vulnerability Database.
• MCP Resources — Expose raw data files as MCP Resources for direct LLM access when full-text context is needed.
• Structured logging & observability — JSON-formatted logs with correlation IDs for debugging tool call chains.
• Authentication & rate limiting — Protect the server in shared deployment scenarios.
• CI/CD pipeline — GitHub Actions running lint, type-check, and tests on every push.

Tech Stack

Component	Choice
Language	TypeScript (ES2022, Node16 modules)
MCP SDK	@modelcontextprotocol/sdk — McpServer high-level API
Validation	Zod
Transport	stdio
Build	tsc
Tests	Vitest

Testing

npm test        # Run all tests (30 tests across parser + repository)
npm run build   # Compile TypeScript
npm start       # Start the MCP server (stdio mode)