Backdoored Claude Code extension 2.1.313 shipped a reverse SSH backdoor via Open VSX and Cursor
- Kevin Beaumont reported that the official Claude Code extension for VS Code contained malware, version 2.1.313, which created a remote access trojan and a persistent reverse SSH backdoor on macOS, Linux, and Windows.
- Beaumont says the extension has 29 million installs and updates automatically, so every organization running it was exposed; Anthropic silently removed the backdoor about 7 hours before his post and has not disclosed a security incident.
- The bad build shipped on Open VSX and in the Cursor marketplace; Cursor published its own notice naming Anthropic.claude-code 2.1.313, and the fixed build is 2.1.314.
- HN commenters note the Microsoft VS Code marketplace build appeared clean, but one reply points out the circulating screenshot is of the official marketplace and that 2.1.313 was pulled from there too as a precaution.
- Beaumont called it a supply chain attack: the threat actor got reverse SSH command line connectivity to Anthropic customer environments at scale, and commenters note the extension only becomes eligible for auto update 12 hours after publish.
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Went and checked the thread because I figured the Binance line had to be a joke. It's a real quote.
Worth pinning down: this hit the Open VSX registry and by extension the Cursor marketplace. As far as anyone knows the build on the official Microsoft marketplace was clean.
Got a source for that? The post claims Open VSX is affected too.
The screenshot going around is of the official marketplace, so I wouldn't lean too hard on the Open VSX only theory. The version got yanked from Microsoft's marketplace as well, though that could just be to avoid confusion over one version number being both infected and clean.
Here's what gets me: of all extension developers, Anthropic should have the best tools for finding this. Did nobody run their own model over the bundle before shipping? Or did it get infected after publish, in which case every extension on Open VSX is suspect.
They seem to push an update every office day. I installed six months ago and never updated, so I'm probably fine?
Emphasis on probably. Until there's an actual postmortem nobody knows when the backdoor went in. You're either lucky or compromised.
Not updating an air gapped box is a security feature, not a bug.
Cursor published its own notice about it, link is in the thread.
With all the frontier dev tooling they have at their disposal they should be shipping securely at 100x speed. Yet here we are.
Backdooring 50 million installs, hats off to whoever pulled that off.
It's 5,000, not 50 million. Check the numbers before quoting them.
Has anyone confirmed when the backdoored version actually went out? None of my machines picked it up. New versions only become eligible for auto update 12 hours after publish, so timing may have saved me.