Backdoor in Claude Code for VS Code extension on the Cursor Marketplace

phorion.io

166 points by _chall 8 hours ago


https://cursor.com/blog/claude-code-extension-security-notic...

https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/117528831681803563

https://doublepulsar.com/anthropic-hacked-to-deliver-remote-...

felixrieseberg - an hour ago

Felix from Anthropic here.

We’re working with Cursor on this incident, but it wasn’t a compromise of Anthropic’s systems or employee laptops. A malicious actor used access to Cursor’s marketplace to publish a tampered copy of the Claude Code extension, which we didn’t build or publish. The versions on our official channels are not affected and this only impacts Cursor users.

yubblegum - 3 hours ago

The original Phorion report really should be up here. It even details what exactly happened. So they simply added a ssh key to the authorized keys.

https://phorion.io/blog/offical-claude-code-vsx-compromise/

AdrianCX - 3 hours ago

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/cursor-says-u...

> Cursor said the extension was not developed by Anthropic and the maliciously modified extension was live on the marketplace from about 2:27 a.m. PT to 1:35 p.m. PT on Thursday

So is this or isn't this from Anthropic and how did this happen?

helsinkiandrew - 3 hours ago

> Yesterday, Anthropic were compromised and Cursor extension used by tens of millions of developers for Claude access was delivering a remote access trojan via an SSH reverse backdoor

That's a bit hyperbolic: someone released a version of the Claude Code VS Code extension with a backdoor on the Cursor marketplace:

> a maliciously modified version of Anthropic’s Claude Code extension was made available in the Cursor VS Code extension Marketplace

https://cursor.com/blog/claude-code-extension-security-notic...

xx_ns - 4 hours ago

I think it should be important to note that this affected the Claude Code extension on the Open VSX extension registry (and by extension, the Cursor marketplace). From what is currently known, the build on the official marketplace was/is clean.

EDIT: I am now actually unsure if this is the case. From what I can see, all of the write-ups mention the Cursor marketplace and Open VSX specifically, but make no explicit mention of the official Microsoft registry.

EDIT 2: The version that was compromised (2.1.313) seems to have never been published on the official Microsoft registry. As per the documentation [1], unpublished versions should still be discoverable:

> When you unpublish an extension, the Marketplace preserves the extension statistics. The extension remains publicly discoverable and available via an existing API.

[1]: https://code.visualstudio.com/api/working-with-extensions/pu...

orlp - 3 hours ago

So if this happened to OpenAI it would've been instantly auto-updated everywhere? VS Code has an "auto update delay" which I have configured to a week, but I just found out that (https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_123):

> Note: This delay does not apply to extensions from trusted publishers such as Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI. These extensions continue to update immediately.

You can't even configure which publishers you "trust"...

paxy - 5 minutes ago

So let me get this straight – Elon was trolling Binance on Twitter, when in fact it was his own company that got hacked and led to the theft?

1shooner - 4 hours ago

Cursor reporting this: https://cursor.com/blog/claude-code-extension-security-notic...

What appears to be an official Binance account reporting it also:

https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/10-30-2026-claude-cod...

anon-3988 - 3 hours ago

I have this realization recently that everyone that uses Claude Code or Codex have basically been running RCE code on a daily basis (me included). So much for "be careful about running curl | bash!". That puts it into perspective what does security and privacy really mean? For all I know, these CLIs could have been secretly scraping my entire directory. Who's checking?

glimshe - 4 hours ago

Why didn't Claude detect the hack and prevent it from affecting customers using its superhuman AGI reasoning?

- 12 minutes ago
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paxy - 2 hours ago

Is there any proof of this or are we just upvoting garbage?

henearkr - 4 hours ago

It wasn't Anthropic that was hacked but SpaceXAI (their Cursor Marketplace).

jitbit - 2 hours ago

Oh god... this needs more attention

An official announcement from Anthropic would be nice!

kiproping - 37 minutes ago

More details from Kevin Beaumont. "Anthropic got compromised. Their Claude Code extension on Visual Studio Code and Cursor has malware in it, which creates a remote access Trojan to desktops. " https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/117528831681803563

Glyptodon - 30 minutes ago

Normal VS code doesn't even use Cursor Marketplace, right? The way this is reported lacks clarity. Do people using plain CS Code even use the Cursor Marketplace? Or am I missing something?

ihuman - 43 minutes ago

This is just the version of extension on the Cursor marketplace, not the one on the VS Code marketplace, right?

richrichardsson - 5 hours ago

How legit is this? Seems low on details.

I don't use Cursor or the VSCode extension, but know plenty in our organisation who use the latter. How worried should we be?

eviks - 4 hours ago

That's literally impossible, with all the access to the frontier software development tools at their disposal they can ship features securely at 100x

_hmj - 2 hours ago

Development must occur in an isolated VM, with no access to the publishing workflow. CI operations must happen in a separate VM or on the host system after scanning all files. Thus, even if the development tools are compromised (like this case), the impact is limited.

Still, it’s hardly a surprise that best practices are rarely followed with any consistency.

vanbashan - 16 minutes ago

Is it related to today binance event?

HexDecOctBin - 3 hours ago

> Claude Code for VS Code extension on the Cursor Marketplace

So Cursor is running its own extension repository? Or is this the official VS Code repository and the incident report just happens to focus on Cursor for some reason?

paaloeye - 2 hours ago

P(doom) crowd say Anthropic has not zero chance to destroy humanity. What it is, the VS Code Extension Marketplace, including Cursor's, must be bigger.

rietta - 2 hours ago

Reading the report alone: "First, the payload makes sure ~/.ssh exists and appends an attacker-controlled Ed25519 public key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys, setting permissions to 0700 on the directory and 0600 on the file."

A system where ~/.ssh/authorized_keys has not been modified might be a hint that this did not execute - the article does not mention self cleanup/reverting to previous status behavior by the malware. By default /var/log/auth.log is only of marginal value because outbound SSH connections are not logged by default.

reilly3000 - 2 hours ago

My tin foil hat says MSFT stands the most to gain my this. https://open-vsx.org/ is where the attack took place, and that power’s all of the VSCode fork’s extensions needs.

ale42 - 5 hours ago

Is this affecting only people using Cursor or all VS Code users? The article specifically mentions the Cursor marketplace. But the affected version is indeed missing on the official VS Code marketplace, was it compromised too?

efficax - 3 hours ago

either the registry is compromised or someone at anthropic got compromised (or did it on purpose to steal crypto). the line in the cursor disclosure about the extension not being developed by anthropic is more confusing than clarifying. amateur hour for these massive corps

stbenjam - 3 hours ago

We still don’t know exactly what happened, but I publish software to public registries, and supply chain attacks scare the hell out of me. They also frustrate me, because most of the defenses aren't automatic and often really hard to get right. We're really failing as an industry to do better here.

VoidWhisperer - 3 hours ago

My question here - does this effect those of us using the official vscode/vscode marketplace? It would seem to imply this was specific to cursor's marketplace but it would be good to know regardless

jacquesm - 2 hours ago

Anthropic is a weird company. On the one hand they have this messianic thing about their super intelligence, on the other hand it is incapable of keeping their own house secure. But you should trust it.

maayank - 2 hours ago

Have we just witnessed the greatest lateral movement in cybersecurity history? https://x.com/dinodaizovi/status/2116125553665458463?a=D1DiF...

lxgr - 2 hours ago

Something very similar is true for ChatGPT on macOS. I was recently very surprised to learn that starting a "Work" conversation on my Mac would grant the agent session file system access which can later be used remotely, e.g. from a browser session logged into the same account on a different computer.

Given how many people likely share ChatGPT subscriptions, this seems highly problematic.

shahbaby - an hour ago

I think right now AI is helping the attackers more than it's helping the defenders.

That part is probably obvious.

But in the long term, I suspect this will get worse.

Attackers will still need to think critically to be a few steps ahead of the defenders.

But the defenders will increasingly outsource their thinking to AI as they are incentived if not outright forced to dumb themselves down into interchangeable cogs.

pier25 - 2 hours ago

God only knows how many skeletons like this are in Bun now

rhedak - 19 minutes ago

Honestly with AI getting smarter it feels like these kind of attacks will only increase...

- 2 hours ago
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anonymous908213 - 3 hours ago

If it is true that Binance was compromised as a result of this, hats off to our new billionaire friend for one hell of a heist.

misnome - 3 hours ago

Has anyone managed to confirm the time that the backdoored version was released? None of my machines updated to it, I am wondering if it was saved by a combination of luck and

> This extension is not updated yet because new versions become eligible for automatic update 12 hours after they are published. It will become eligible in 2 hours.

soundworlds - 2 hours ago

The descriptions around this are very confusing. Is this specifically the Cursor version, or the regular VS Code version too?

Handy-Man - an hour ago

That's not official extension though? Misleading title

kirth_gersen - 2 hours ago

This is why when I use AI, I still download from the browser and drag and drop the outputted files like a caveman. Sure, it's slower, but it keeps my mental model more up to date and has less security risks. I can even...like read the thing before I run it rather than giving a LLM access to my shell directly. Also anecdotally, it seems more token efficient for those who care about that.

numbsafari - 3 hours ago

This puts an entirely new spin on Elon trolling Binance on Twitter.

mrweasel - 5 hours ago

How will they communicate and fix that. The affected version has been yanked from the marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=anthropi... but that doesn't clean up infected machines.

mindracer - 5 hours ago

Some more details

https://doublepulsar.com/anthropic-hacked-to-deliver-remote-...

acedTrex - an hour ago

Thankfully coding is solved everyone

blondie9x - 2 hours ago

From https://doublepulsar.com/anthropic-hacked-to-deliver-remote-...

Notable customers who run Claude Code and Cursor on laptops include Binance, amongst thousands of others.

Did the Claude Code plugin hack cause the Binance theft? The timing seems like an incredible coincidence.

- 3 hours ago
[deleted]
nubinetwork - 4 hours ago

It looks like they push an update every office day. I'm guessing if I installed 6 months ago and didn't update, that I should be fine?

rolosa - 4 hours ago

He says to follow his social, and he provides his handle, but there's no link, and I have no idea how to read it.

DEADF007 - 2 hours ago

I don't care anymore, how are you supposed to defend yourself against attacks like this? Come and hack me.

K0nserv - 4 hours ago

If the sole purpose of this hack was to steal cryptocurrency, a silver lining might be, as in many similar cases, that if you stay away from that particular dumpster fire you are probably okay. I mean there's still a reverse shell on your machine to fix, but at least nothing of value was lost.

mindracer - 7 hours ago

The extension has over 27 million installs, ouch

paaloeye - 2 hours ago

Another reason for not using VS Code and derived and all their mess of extensions. I'm glad running Claude Code in Ghostty/Terminal is not affected.

villgax - 2 hours ago

What I dont understand is why the hell do these extensions & clis need to update every damn day. clearly there's no new models everyday, what the actual f.

rvz - 3 hours ago

This is embarrassing to Anthropic given here that they lack basic security procedures to prevent this and they have gotten themselves hacked to push malware.

Claude Code was already malware, but with this attack you cannot trust the vendor either.

In the next 2 weeks, no one should download / install / update anything as I predict at least one developer's key for a GitHub, NPM, Crates.io or any other CI or login was leaked and the attacker will target those services to propagate their trojan to more victims.

jedisct1 - 3 hours ago

Keep sending all your secrets and giving full control of your devices to Anthropic.

This is fine.

- 8 hours ago
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- 3 hours ago
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xteam - 3 hours ago

♟

hem777 - 4 hours ago

”I've confirmed Binance use Claude Code with this extension.”

try-working - 2 hours ago

"Software is solved. Bugs are not yet solved"

stopsayingsorry - 4 hours ago

Imagine backdooring 50+ million installs.

Hats off to the hackers.

felixrieseberg - an hour ago

Felix from Anthropic here.

We’re working with Cursor on this incident, but it wasn’t a compromise of Anthropic’s systems or employee laptops. A malicious actor used access to Cursor’s marketplace to publish a tampered copy of the Claude Code extension, which we didn’t build or publish. The versions on our official channels are not affected and this only impacts Cursor users.

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poelzi - 3 hours ago

I guess, this is why I'm building tix.im ...

airhangerf15 - 4 hours ago

VS Code extensions have always been terrible from a security perspective. This seems like it's a supply chain attack? Makes me think of Solar Winds from a few years ago.

It doesn't appear that the Claude Code harness itself was compromised, was it? or Cursor if you use Anthropic models via Cursor's API itself?

Lately I've been using a script that mounts my current working directory in a container and I put all my build tools in a Dockerfile. I also map the harness config (~/.config/opencode or whatever) to a named volume to minimize the chance a harness could grab other things off my host. I can't use it if I ask the LLMs for docker work since they need the docker socket and then all bets are off (it could just mount your root volume somewhere). I sure I could use a full QEMU VM or some other type of isolation for such devops tasks, but I haven't really looked into it yet. Guess I should.