BEIJING: A Chinese industry regulator warned users on Wednesday of a “security backdoor” embedded in versions of Anthropic´s Claude Code, but the US artificial intelligence company described the mechanism as an anti-abuse measure.
Claude Code is an AI agent that can generate computer code, debug software and review code based on user prompts.
Anthropic prohibits users and companies in China and other nations it deems adversarial from accessing it, but users can sometimes get around this through VPN or third-party proxy services.
Allegations of a backdoor first emerged in specialist tech media last week, and on Wednesday China´s National Vulnerability Database (NVDB) -- a cybersecurity platform affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology -- said it had recently detected “security backdoor risks, posing a severe threat”.
Anthropic told AFP Wednesday that the mechanism checked a device´s timezone and whether a request was routed through a domain tied to an unsupported region or a known problematic entity.
China´s NVDB advised relevant institutions and users “to conduct a comprehensive check immediately” and “promptly uninstall or upgrade to the latest secure version from which the relevant backdoor code has been removed”.
