Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-44470 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-44470 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-44470?
- High severity, with a CVSS score of 7.8, published 13 May 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Anthropic Claude Desktop < 1.3834.0.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-44470?
- No fixed version is recorded yet. Check the vendor's advisory in the references below. If you run it, Junglewise drafts a mitigation that fits your setup and applies it once you approve, with senior security engineers behind it.
- How is CVE-2026-44470 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access, in a network appliance.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-44470?
- Check whether you run Anthropic Claude Desktop at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
The CoworkVMService component in Claude Desktop for Windows, which runs with SYSTEM privileges, fails to validate whether the VM bundle directory is a legitimate directory or an NTFS directory junction before performing file operations. A local, non-privileged attacker can replace the user-writable VM bundle directory with a directory junction pointing to a restricted system location. This causes the service to create or overwrite files in that location with SYSTEM ownership, which can be leveraged to achieve full local privilege escalation. The vulnerability is classified as CWE-59 (Improper Link Resolution) and is resolved in version 1.3834.0.
Affected products
- Anthropic Claude Desktop versions prior to 1.3834.0
Timeline
- 2026-05-06: advisory: Vendor advisory published on GitHub
- 2026-05-13: disclosed: CVE published to NVD