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Backdoors in official Claude Code extensions

cyberplace.social

662 points by dsr_ · 19 comments

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3 threads
tomhow

Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300683.

altbdoor

Cursor has released a security notice:

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

Edit: related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50301983

  • sharpshadow

    Looks like a solid response with instructions and scripts how to get rid of the infection, but it doesn’t explain how it got there.

    • justusw

      Agreed, it doesn't offer a root cause analysis. Remedies are good but how do you prove that it won't happen again? Remember that these are never singular incidents but part of a bad security culture.

  • yubblegum

    > Cursor: "This malicious version of the extension was not developed by Anthropic."

    Wtf does that mean.

    • olmo23

      It sounds to me like they're saying it wasn't an Anthropic employee which decided to drop an SSH backdoor.

    • mirashii

      Given they mentioned taking down and rebuilding the marketplace registry in that post, it seems equally likely that Cursor’s infrastructure was the source of the intrusion and a folks are jumping the gun on attribution.

      Edit: I was correct. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50304129

    • bunderbunder

      I would guess it’s supposed to communicate a few things. One big one is, ”Our AI software factory didn’t do it. Don’t worry, letting Claude spin away with limited human supervision is still safe.”

    • dgellow

      It would be hilarious if that’s an obfuscated way to say Claude developed it. “Claude, who was birthed but not hired by Anthropic, went rogue by hijacking the extension”

    • sourcecodeplz

      someone got access to the account that can publish extension on cursor marketplace?

    • stingraycharles

      It means that Anthropic did not intentionally develop a malicious version, obviously. But it’s a bit disingenuous and tries to suggest that it wasn’t Anthropic that uploaded it and/or wasn’t published under Anthropic’s name, which isn’t true.

    • LastTrain

      It means we are from now on in an era of plausible deniability.

    • internet_points

      we got hacked by someone other than ourselves this time

    • noitpmeder

      Just by people they paid to represent them.

  • oefrha

    > Related posts: Cursor earns AIUC-1 certification for agent security and reliability

    The irony.

rhedak

These days no one is immune to these kind of attacks... Honestly it will only get worse from here.

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