What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-49986: Cortex has Untrusted Project Bootstrap Code Execution via `CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR`

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.1 v4.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-08-14 · updated 2026-09-18
• Weakness: CWE-829

Description

The Cortex MCP server (`neuro-cortex-memory`), a cross-platform persistent memory MCP, prior to version 3.17.1 treats the `CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR` environment variable — automatically set by Claude Code to the currently open project directory — as a trusted Cortex developer checkout. When the `open_visualization` tool is invoked, `_find_dev_source()` resolves the user's active project directory as a candidate Cortex source root. The only validation performed by `_is_cortex_root()` is a check for the presence of an `mcp_server/` subdirectory and a `ui/unified-viz.html` file. An attacker who places these two marker files in a malicious repository can cause Cortex to execute an arbitrary `mcp_server/server/visualize_bootstrap.py` from that directory via `subprocess.run([sys.executable, ...])`, achieving code execution with the privileges of the victim's local user process. Version 3.17.1 fixes the issue.

Affected products

• cdeust Cortex: before 3.17.1

References

• https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/releases/tag/v3.17.1
• https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/security/advisories/GHSA-gvpp-v77h-5w8g
• https://github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/neuro-cortex-memory/PYSEC-2026-2676.yaml
• https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/security/advisories/GHSA-gvpp-v77h-5w8g

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