Critical Vulnerabilities in Anthropic Claude Code Enable RCE and API Key Theft via Malicious Repositories
Check Point Research disclosed multiple critical vulnerabilities in Anthropic’s Claude Code AI coding assistant that could allow remote code execution and credential theft when a developer clones and opens an untrusted repository. The reported attack path abuses repository-controlled configuration and automation features (including Hooks, MCP servers, and environment variables) to trigger hidden shell command execution and to exfiltrate Anthropic API credentials, potentially enabling a pivot from a developer workstation into broader enterprise environments where Claude-related workflows and shared resources are accessible.
The issues include consent-bypass and command-execution weaknesses tracked under CVE-2025-59536 (covering closely related flaws involving repository configuration executing commands without adequate user consent) and an API credential exposure issue tracked as CVE-2026-21852, which affected Claude Code versions prior to 2.0.65 and enabled API key theft via malicious project configurations. Anthropic has patched the vulnerabilities and advised users to update to the latest version, while indicating additional hardening measures are planned to reduce supply-chain risk from malicious commits and repository-level configuration abuse.
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Vulnerabilities in Anthropic Claude Code Enable Code Execution and API Key Exfiltration
Security researchers disclosed multiple vulnerabilities in **Anthropic’s Claude Code** AI coding assistant that could enable **arbitrary command execution** and **exfiltration of Anthropic API credentials** when developers clone/open a malicious repository. Check Point Research reported the issues abuse Claude Code configuration and initialization paths—particularly **project hooks** (e.g., untrusted `.claude/settings.json`), **Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers**, and **environment variables**—to trigger shell command execution and data theft. Anthropic’s advisory for **CVE-2026-21852** describes a project-load flow where a crafted repo can set `ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL` to an attacker-controlled endpoint, causing Claude Code to send API requests **before** the trust prompt is shown, potentially leaking the user’s API key. The disclosed issues include two high-severity code-injection paths (CVSS **8.7**) and one information-disclosure flaw (CVSS **5.3**): a consent-bypass/hook-based injection issue fixed in *Claude Code* **1.0.87** (Sept 2025), **CVE-2025-59536** fixed in **1.0.111** (Oct 2025), and **CVE-2026-21852** fixed in **2.0.65** (Jan 2026). Separate coverage framed Anthropic-related developments as market-moving, noting investor attention around Anthropic’s AI code-security tooling; however, the actionable security impact in this reporting is the risk that simply opening an attacker-controlled repository can lead to **RCE** and **credential leakage**, reinforcing the need to treat untrusted repos and tool initialization behaviors as a supply-chain and developer-workstation risk.
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