CVE-2026-49986

Summary

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 Software

Weaknesses

• CWE-829: CWE-829: Inclusion of Functionality from Untrusted Control Sphere

References

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

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