ScanMalware.com URL Scanner MCP server

scanmalware-mcp

Minimal Python MCP server that wraps the public ScanMalware.com API.

Operations

See the operations runbook for deployment, TLS, logging, security maintenance, and how to connect to the DigitalOcean droplet.

Run locally (Streamable HTTP)

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -U pip
pip install .

export MCP_TRANSPORT=streamable-http
export MCP_HOST=127.0.0.1
export MCP_PORT=8000

scanmalware-mcp

Run with Docker

docker build -t scanmalware-mcp .
docker run --rm -p 127.0.0.1:8000:8000 \
  -e MCP_TRANSPORT=streamable-http \
  -e MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 \
  -e MCP_PORT=8000 \
  scanmalware-mcp

Optional: set MCP_AUTH_TOKEN to require Authorization: Bearer <MCP_AUTH_TOKEN> for HTTP transports.

Optional auth env vars (only needed for auth-gated endpoints):

• SCANMALWARE_BEARER_TOKEN

Other env vars:

• SCANMALWARE_BASE_URL (default: https://scanmalware.com)
• SCANMALWARE_ALLOW_HTTP (default: false)
• SCANMALWARE_TIMEOUT_S (default: 30)
• SCANMALWARE_SLOW_QUERY_TIMEOUT_S (default: 90; favicon and technology statistics, OCR text search, JS fingerprint similarity counts and behavioural signature search)
• SCANMALWARE_MAX_DOWNLOAD_BYTES (default: 10485760)
• SCANMALWARE_MAX_JSON_BYTES (default: 10485760; decoded JSON response limit)
• SCANMALWARE_MAX_ERROR_BYTES (default: 16384; error body sample, with truncation marked)
• SCANMALWARE_ALLOW_PRIVATE_TARGETS (default: false)
• SCANMALWARE_CA_CERT (optional; path to a CA bundle for SSL bump)

MCP server security env vars:

• MCP_AUTH_TOKEN (if set, HTTP transports require Authorization: Bearer <token>)
• MCP_RESOURCE_SERVER_URL / MCP_ISSUER_URL (optional; only used when MCP_AUTH_TOKEN is set)

Transport note: the HTTP transports run stateless (stateless_http=True), so responses carry no mcp-session-id header. Clients must not require one. This keeps per-session state - and therefore memory - flat. Both MCP protocol generations are served: initialize (2024-11-05 to 2025-11-25) and server/discover (2026-07-28). Requests use POST; GET on /mcp returns 405 because the server offers no standalone SSE stream.

SSE transport: set MCP_TRANSPORT=sse, and optionally MCP_SSE_MOUNT_PATH to serve it under a path prefix.

Tool note: submit_scan does not call /api/v1/csrf-token; there is no CSRF token tool. Tool note: some upstream endpoints are disabled and excluded from the tool list (e.g., get_improvements, find_screenshot_duplicates, get_ai_stats, search_js_fingerprinter2_code_hash, search_js_segments_by_tlsh). Filters: every search tool can be called with its defaults. search_js_fingerprint_patterns applies has_eval=true when no pattern filter is given, because the API requires one; search_js_obfuscation and search_js_malware_families fall back to the API's own defaults. Score filters use the API's scales and are checked before the request: the AI risk score is 0-10, AI confidence 0-100, JS obfuscation scores 0-1 and the runtime JS risk score 0-100. OCR search requires at least three characters after trimming. Library lookups use detected identifiers from get_js_library_inventory; search_js_fingerprint_by_library accepts Next.js as an alias for the detected identifier nextjs.

Semantic search compares text with screenshot embeddings. Its default threshold is -0.2, with a supported range of -1 to 1; useful cross-modal thresholds are usually around -0.3 to 0.

wait_for_scan bounds the whole operation, including upstream requests, retry backoff and sleeps. timeout_s must be greater than zero and at most 3600; poll_interval_s must be between 0.1 and 60. Retryable failures use backoff and honor Retry-After within that deadline. A timeout returns the last summary, or status: "unknown" and an empty summary if no poll succeeded. Submissions and other writes are not automatically retried.

Scan visibility

submit_scan requires scan_type; there is no default. A public scan puts the target URL and scan results in ScanMalware's public feed, visible to other users and search engines. Choose deliberately for client targets, confidential URLs, and security engagements:

• public: publishes the scan. Use for these targets only with explicit approval to publish.
• unlisted: excluded from public listings, but accessible to anyone with the direct link.
• private: results are restricted to the authenticated ScanMalware account. Requires a valid SCANMALWARE_BEARER_TOKEN configured on the MCP server; MCP_AUTH_TOKEN only controls access to the MCP server and does not provide ScanMalware authentication.

If visibility has not already been specified for these targets, ask the user to choose unlisted or private before submitting. If submission fails, do not retry with a less restrictive visibility. These modes control scan visibility; requests still go to ScanMalware and may be recorded in server logs (see the MCP privacy policy). ScanMalware documents the visibility options in its privacy policy.

Example prompts

Phishing triage (submit → wait → summarize):

Submit an unlisted scan for https://example-login-update.com, wait for completion, and
return status, risk_score, and the top indicators. If high risk, include the
AI analysis and screenshot resource.

Brand abuse monitoring:

Search scans for "acme login" (limit 5). For each result, list scan_id,
status, risk_score, and URL. Highlight anything marked high risk.

TLS/certificate inspection:

For scan_id 1234...abcd, fetch TLS details and the certificate PEM download.
Summarize issuer, subject, validity dates, and SANs; flag mismatches.

Deploy to DigitalOcean (Debian + Docker + Nginx)

The deploy bundle lives in deploy/ and runs three containers:

• mcp (this server, streamable HTTP on port 8000)
• nginx (frontend on ports 80/443; redirects HTTP to HTTPS and proxies /mcp to the MCP server)
• proxy (mitmproxy, checks ScanMalware destinations and logs upstream HTTP traffic)

Prereqs

• doctl authenticated (doctl auth init)
• SSH key uploaded to DigitalOcean (used by doctl compute droplet create)
• DNS and Let's Encrypt certificates at the paths in HTTPS / TLS before starting Nginx

Create a small droplet in Germany (Frankfurt)

DROPLET_NAME=scanmalware-mcp-small
REGION=fra1
SIZE=s-1vcpu-2gb
IMAGE=debian-12-x64
SSH_KEYS=$(doctl compute ssh-key list --format ID --no-header | paste -sd, -)

doctl compute droplet create "$DROPLET_NAME" \
  --region "$REGION" \
  --size "$SIZE" \
  --image "$IMAGE" \
  --ssh-keys "$SSH_KEYS" \
  --tag-name scanmalware-mcp \
  --wait

Firewall (public HTTP/HTTPS + SSH)

doctl compute firewall create \
  --name scanmalware-mcp-fw \
  --inbound-rules "protocol:tcp,ports:22,address:0.0.0.0/0,address:::0/0" \
  --inbound-rules "protocol:tcp,ports:80,address:0.0.0.0/0,address:::0/0" \
  --inbound-rules "protocol:tcp,ports:443,address:0.0.0.0/0,address:::0/0" \
  --outbound-rules "protocol:icmp,ports:0,address:0.0.0.0/0,address:::0/0" \
  --outbound-rules "protocol:tcp,ports:0,address:0.0.0.0/0,address:::0/0" \
  --outbound-rules "protocol:udp,ports:0,address:0.0.0.0/0,address:::0/0" \
  --droplet-ids <droplet-id>

Install Docker + compose on the droplet

Install Docker Engine and the Compose plugin from the official Docker apt repository. Use docker compose; the old Python docker-compose client is incompatible with current Docker Engine.

See the operations runbook for pinned builds and maintenance checks.

Upload and run

# Package exactly one commit; a tar of the working tree also picks up untracked
# files (.tools/, caches, egg-info) and uncommitted edits.
git archive --format=tar.gz -o /tmp/scanmalware-mcp.tar.gz origin/main
scp -i /path/to/key /tmp/scanmalware-mcp.tar.gz root@<droplet-ip>:/tmp/
ssh -i /path/to/key root@<droplet-ip> \
  "mkdir -p /opt/scanmalware-mcp && tar -xzf /tmp/scanmalware-mcp.tar.gz -C /opt/scanmalware-mcp"

On a fresh host, follow TLS inspection to build the proxy and generate its CA before starting MCP and Nginx. Install the egress rules and Docker startup hook and log rotation as part of host setup.

Verify

curl -I https://mcp.scanmalware.com/
curl -sS -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' https://mcp.scanmalware.com/mcp

/ should return 200 from Nginx. /mcp returns 405 on GET, which is expected: the server offers no standalone SSE stream, so MCP requests use POST.

Smoke test (MCP initialize + tools/list)

python - <<'PY'
import json
import httpx

URL = "https://mcp.scanmalware.com/mcp"
HEADERS = {
    "accept": "application/json, text/event-stream",
    "content-type": "application/json",
}

init_payload = {
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "id": 1,
    "method": "initialize",
    "params": {
        "protocolVersion": "2025-06-18",
        "capabilities": {},
        "clientInfo": {"name": "mcp-smoke-test", "version": "0.1.0"},
    },
}

with httpx.Client(timeout=10) as client:
    init_resp = client.post(URL, headers=HEADERS, json=init_payload)
    init_resp.raise_for_status()
    # Stateless deployments return no session header.
    session_id = init_resp.headers.get("mcp-session-id")

    def extract_sse_data(text: str) -> dict:
        for line in text.splitlines():
            if line.startswith("data: "):
                return json.loads(line[len("data: "):])
        raise ValueError("No SSE data line found")

    init_message = extract_sse_data(init_resp.text)
    protocol_version = init_message["result"]["protocolVersion"]

    headers = {**HEADERS, "mcp-protocol-version": protocol_version}
    if session_id:
        headers["mcp-session-id"] = session_id

    # Send initialized notification
    client.post(
        URL,
        headers=headers,
        json={"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "notifications/initialized"},
    )

    tools_resp = client.post(
        URL,
        headers=headers,
        json={"jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 2, "method": "tools/list"},
    )
    tools_resp.raise_for_status()
    tools_message = extract_sse_data(tools_resp.text)
    tool_names = [tool["name"] for tool in tools_message["result"]["tools"]]

print("protocol_version:", protocol_version)
print("tool_count:", len(tool_names))
print("tools:", ", ".join(tool_names))
PY

Redeploy / new deploys

Two common flows:

1. In-place update (same droplet)

# Package exactly one commit; a tar of the working tree also picks up untracked
# files (.tools/, caches, egg-info) and uncommitted edits.
git archive --format=tar.gz -o /tmp/scanmalware-mcp.tar.gz origin/main
scp -i /path/to/key /tmp/scanmalware-mcp.tar.gz root@<droplet-ip>:/tmp/
ssh -i /path/to/key root@<droplet-ip> \
  "bash /opt/scanmalware-mcp/deploy/redeploy.sh /tmp/scanmalware-mcp.tar.gz"

The redeploy script validates and builds in a staging directory while the current stack runs, then switches files and waits for readiness. It preserves .env, deploy/.env, the mitmproxy CA and logs. A failed build leaves the current stack running; a failed startup restores the prior files and image tags. Other untracked files are removed on a successful release. See the runbook for persistent configuration and recovery.

Optional one-shot helper from the repo root (it packs the working tree, including uncommitted changes, rather than a commit):

./deploy/push-redeploy.sh root@<droplet-ip> /path/to/key

To update only the MCP server with a few seconds of downtime, see Updating only the MCP server.

1. Rolling deploy (new droplet)

• Create a new droplet (steps above)
• Deploy the same bundle
• Switch DNS to the new IP
• Destroy the old droplet when ready

doctl compute droplet delete <old-droplet-id> --force