Claude Desktop: SSH Host Key Verification Bypass Allows Man-in-the-Middle Attack on Remote Sessions
- Published
- Last modified
- Where the record stands: published, rejected by its publisher, or superseded by another id.What do these mean? →
- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Fix
- Fixed in 1.4304.0
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
- Exploitation: none
- Automatable: no
- Technical impact: total
Summary
The Claude Desktop app gives you Claude Code with a graphical interface built for running multiple sessions side by side. From 1.2581.0 to before 1.4304.0, Claude Desktop's SSH remote development feature verified only whether a hostname existed in ~/.ssh/known_hosts without comparing the server's presented host key against the stored key. This allowed a network-positioned attacker to present an arbitrary SSH host key and have the connection silently accepted, enabling a man-in-the-middle attack on remote development sessions. Successful exploitation required the attacker to be in a network position to intercept SSH traffic (e.g., via ARP spoofing, rogue Wi-Fi, or DNS poisoning) and the target hostname to already have an entry in the victim's known_hosts file. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.4304.0.
Timeline
- CVE published
- CISA SSVC assessment
Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total
- Record last updated
Affected versions
- anthropics claude-code
From 1.2581.0 · fixed in 1.4304.0