Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-88968 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-88968 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-88968?
- High severity, with a CVSS score of 4, published 3 November 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Anthropic Claude Code prior to 2.1.251; @anthropic-ai/claude-code (npm) < 2.1.251, SEMVER:introduced=0,fixed=2.1.251.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-88968?
- Yes. @anthropic-ai/claude-code (npm): upgrade to 2.1.251 or later. Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2026-88968 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-88968?
- Check whether you run Anthropic Claude Code or @anthropic-ai/claude-code (npm) 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.
How to fix
- @anthropic-ai/claude-code (npm): upgrade to 2.1.251 or later
npm install @anthropic-ai/claude-code@2.1.251
Technical details
This is a time-of-check-to-time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition in the Edit tool's pathname and symlink validation logic. The tool validates the target path at a point in time, but does not bind the check to the actual directory inode or file descriptor; an attacker with code execution in the Bash sandbox can atomically replace an in-workspace parent directory with a symlink between validation and the file write operation. The unsandboxed Edit implementation then follows the symlink and overwrites a file outside the workspace, requiring prior ability to run attacker-controlled code in the sandbox.
Affected products
- Anthropic Claude Code prior to 2.1.251
Identifiers
- CVE-2026-88968
- GHSA-5xjx-9qx6-jcrv
Timeline
- 2026-10-26: disclosed
- 2026-08-28: patched