Several versions of the US coding tool contain a backdoor transmitting users’ location and identity data without consent, the National Vulnerability Database claims
China has accused Anthropic’s AI coding tool Claude Code of containing “security backdoor vulnerabilities” capable of transmitting sensitive user information without consent, warning the mechanism poses a “serious security risk.”
Claude Code, developed by the US startup with close ties to the Pentagon, is an AI-powered coding assistant that helps developers write, edit, debug, and understand code using natural-language prompts. Because it runs inside a developer’s terminal rather than a browser, it can access source code and other files the user chooses to share.
In a risk advisory issued on Wednesday, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s (MIIT) cybersecurity threat platform NVDB said it had identified a potential security risk in several recent Claude Code versions. According to NVDB, they contain a “built-in monitoring mechanism” that automatically transmits users’ geographic location, identity identifiers, and other sensitive data to remote servers without consent.
The MIIT described the alleged mechanism as a potentially malicious feature that could pose privacy, security, and intellectual property risks, as AI coding assistants are often used on proprietary software and other sensitive codebases. It urged users to review affected systems, uninstall the vulnerable versions, or upgrade to a release with the alleged backdoor removed.
It also called for tighter controls on outbound network access for development tools and stronger traffic monitoring to prevent unauthorized data transmission.
Anthropic has not publicly responded to the advisory.
China’s relationship with Anthropic has been contentious. While the company prohibits Chinese firms and their foreign affiliates from using Claude under regional and national security restrictions, reports say Chinese researchers and engineers continue to access it via overseas proxies. Since February, Anthropic has accused Alibaba and several other Chinese AI labs of illegally “distilling” its models to train competing systems.
The advisory followed claims posted on Reddit last week that Anthropic had secretly “embedded spyware in Claude Code” to identify users illegally accessing the service from China.
Hi, this is an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation.
The team has landed stronger mitigations since then and we’ve actually been meaning to take this down for a while. We merged the…
Anthropic employee Thariq responded on X that the code was part of an “experiment” launched “to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation,” adding that the company planned to remove the mechanism in the July 2 release.
Anthropic has also faced controversy in the US. While the company has highlighted safeguards around its AI – recently withholding its Claude Mythos model over fears it could expose critical software vulnerabilities and resisting Pentagon requests to relax restrictions on surveillance and autonomous weapons – its technology has reportedly been integrated into Palantir’s analysis and surveillance software used by US government agencies.
During the US war on Iran, the software reportedly identified an elementary school in Minab as a target. A subsequent US strike killed nearly 160 people, but Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei argued that the use of Claude did not violate the company’s “red lines,” claiming “a human made that final call.”
