CVE-2026-50549
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…
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (1.01%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
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.
- CVSS 4.0
- 9.3 CRITICALCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
- EPSS
- 1.01% probability · 61th percentile
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-59
- Affected
- anysphere/cursor
- Source
- security-advisories@github.com
References
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.