Flaws in Claude Code Put Developers' Machines at Risk

Dark Reading

by Jai Vijayan

February 25, 2026

AI-Generated Deep Dive Summary

Three critical security vulnerabilities in Anthropic's AI-powered coding tool, Claude Code, have been identified by Check Point Research, potentially exposing developers to full machine takeover and credential theft. These flaws, which were fixed by Anthropic after being reported last year, highlight the risks of integrating AI into software development tools. The vulnerabilities allowed attackers to execute arbitrary commands through repository-controlled configuration files, creating severe supply chain risks. For instance, a malicious commit could compromise any developer using an affected repository. Two of the vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-59536) involved configuration files executing commands without user consent. Check Point researchers demonstrated how these flaws could be exploited to gain remote access to a developer's terminal with elevated privileges. The third vulnerability, CVE-2026-21852, affected earlier versions of Claude Code and enabled API credential theft through malicious project configurations. These issues underscore the risks associated with AI development tools that have direct access to source code, local files, and sometimes even production credentials. Claude Code's features, such as its "Hooks" functionality for enforcing consistent behavior in projects and its Model Context Protocol (MCP) for connecting with external services, were found to be exploitable. Attackers could manipulate these features to execute malicious commands or steal sensitive information. Anthropic has addressed these issues by introducing additional security measures and advising developers to use the latest version

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Originally published on Dark Reading on 2/25/2026