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Vulnerability Analysis
Cursor Desktop sandbox escape via symlink and failed path canonicalization

CVE-2026-50549

Cursor is a code editor built for programming with AI. Prior to 3.0, Cursor runs agent terminal commands in a sandbox by default. Before a Write, the agent canonicalizes the target path to confirm it stays inside the workspace, but when canonicalization fails it falls back to the original path and writes without approval. A malicious agent can create an in-workspace symlink that points outside the workspace and force canonicalization to fail — either because the target does not exist or because read permission is removed from the path — so the agent writes through the symlink to an arbitrary location without approval. A malicious agent could write arbitrary files outside the workspace under the user's privileges. This enables non-sandboxed Remote Code Execution — for example by overwriting the cursorsandbox helper so later commands run unsandboxed — with no user interaction beyond a benign prompt. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.0.

No Active Exploit Signals
CVSS Base Score
9.3
CRITICAL
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Threat Intelligence Signals

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SSVC Exploitation
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Exploit DB ReferencesNone identified

Affected Products & Versions

Vendor Product Affected Versions
No affected products specified.

References

No reference links found.

LINK COPIED TO CLIPBOARD