Over the past few months, SpaceX , owned by Elon Musk , acquired Cursor in a deal worth about $60 billion. Cursor develops an AI programming tool of the same name that allows users to use more than one model at the same time and is used by millions of active developers daily, as well as being relied upon by thousands of companies.
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In recent days, the platform has been attacked, resulting in the release of a malicious version of the tool linking it to Anthropic's Cloud Code artificial intelligence company. This threatens millions of users who rely on it, as the tool's page shows around 63 million downloads.
The Cursor platform provides a range of tools that can be downloaded directly from its own store. These tools work with its official software environment, which connects it to artificial intelligence tools and competing companies' models.
What happened in the attack?
The danger of the recent attack on the Cursor platform lies in the fact that the hackers succeeded in distributing the malicious version of the Cloud Code linking tool to the platform’s programming interface in the form of an update bearing the official digital identifier for Anthropic updates, which made the store publish the update as an official update from the company.
This means that any user who sees the extension will think it is an official extension from Anthropic, and not an extension containing malicious code that could compromise their device.
Cursor explained in its statement that the attack affected about 5,000 users before it succeeded in removing the malicious add-on from its store.
Jane Gail, co-founder of the Open Source Malware initiative, believes that the total number of those affected may exceed the number announced by Cursor because some of them may activate the automatic update feature from the platform's store.
This means that some users will not need to visit the platform's pages and manually click to install updates within Cursor's tools, and then the update that the platform thought was official will reach them without their intervention and without the platform knowing that.
As the report from the American tech website "Bleeping Computer" explained, the attack did not affect any other software add-on store, whether from Microsoft or others, noting that only the "Kerser" store was attacked.
Greater risk than a single tool
The posting of the malicious tool in the official store of the "Kerser" platform and under Anthropic's official account raises several key questions about the mechanism of this attack, as the hackers not only succeeded in posting a malicious tool inside the platform's store, but also made it appear official.
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