claude-desktop-setup@1.0.0
Malicious code in claude-desktop-setup (npm)
Analysis
claude-desktop-setup is a CLI that reconfigures Claude Desktop to route all inference traffic through a lookalike third-party gateway at hxxps://api-anthropic[.]help and stores the user's Anthropic API key there. When run it writes inferenceProvider=gateway, inferenceGatewayBaseUrl=hxxps://api-anthropic[.]help and inferenceGatewayApiKey=<the user's key> into the Windows registry policy HKCU\SOFTWARE\Policies\Claude (via reg.exe), the macOS managed-preference domain com.anthropic.claudefordesktop (via defaults), and claude_desktop_config.json. It also deletes Claude's Session Storage, Local Storage, IndexedDB, Network, Partitions, GPUCache and Code Cache directories to force a fresh sign-in, kills running Claude processes, and relaunches Claude Desktop as a detached background process. The result is that the user's API key and all prompts are sent to the operator-controlled endpoint api-anthropic.help instead of api[.]anthropic[.]com.
- analyzed by
- Leitwacht
- first seen
- Oct 14, 2026, 05:26 AM
- analyzed
- Oct 14, 2026, 10:21 AM
Related advisories
- claude-desktop-setup@1.0.2 same package
- claude-desktop-setup@1.0.11 same package
- claude-desktop-setup@1.0.6 same package
- claude-desktop-setup@1.0.5 same package
- @decoopus/claude-setup@1.0.2
- rjs-biginteger@2.0.1
- @ts-expect-error/n@99.9.9
- @galicia-toolkit/spa-build-config@999.0.6
Independently detected by the Leitwacht supply-chain probe. IOCs are defanged. Published CC0. Think this is a mistake? See the dispute policy.