Official Claude Code Extension on Cursor Marketplace Trojanized with Persistent SSH Backdoor
Summary: A trojanized version of Anthropic's official Claude Code extension, labeled version 2.1.313, was published under the legitimate publisher identity on the Cursor Marketplace and stayed live for close to 12 hours, between about 2:27 a.m. and 1:35 p.m. PT on October 29, 2026. The package carried a 66-line malicious loader inserted before the legitimate extension code that added an attacker-controlled SSH key labeled "svc-telemetry" to authorized_keys, attempted to enable SSH and open a reverse tunnel to 134.209.82[.]225, installed scheduled task, crontab, and LaunchAgent persistence, and sent host reconnaissance to 134.209.82[.]225:8099/beacon over unencrypted HTTP.
Bottom line: Cursor says at most 5,000 users installed the malicious version, and anyone with Claude Code set to auto-update could have consumed it - while Microsoft notes that removing or updating the extension does not remove the SSH keys, tunnel identities, scripts, and startup entries written outside its install directory.
Read the original at The Hacker News ↗
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