Anthropic's VS Code extension on Cursor was backdoored for nearly 12 hours
From the AI digest for Oct 31, 2026
What happened: Ars Technica reports that Anthropic's verified VS Code extension as distributed on Cursor carried a backdoor for nearly 12 hours before the compromise was caught. It is still unknown how attackers gained access to Anthropic's verified Cursor account.
What's genuinely new: First report of the incident itself — a verified developer-account compromise on the Cursor platform touching an AI lab's code distribution, with a roughly 12-hour exposure period and no confirmed entry point.
Watch: How the attackers got into the verified account, what the backdoored build actually did, whether developers who installed it during the exposure are told to act, and any response from Cursor.
Links: Ars Technica · Oct 30, 5:09 PM ET