A backdoored Claude Code extension rides Cursor's auto-update; OpenAI-backed Thrive agrees to buy ADT — October 31, 2026

A malicious Claude Code extension reached up to 5,000 Cursor users through Anthropic's own account, and Thrive Holdings struck a $15.3B deal for ADT with OpenAI supplying the engineers. Plus Deepgram buys Pipecat-maker Daily, and Fujifilm quintuples tape production on AI archive demand.

In this episode

1. Anthropic VS code extension on Cursor backdoored for nearly 12 hours — Ars Technica“Cursor said that the malicious extension attempts to install a persistent SSH backdoor using an added attacker-controlled SSH key, enabling the local SSH service, and opening a reverse SSH tunnel. The code was written to work on Windows, macOS, and Linux.”
2. OpenAI-backed Thrive Holdings acquires ADT | TechCrunch — TechCrunch“Thrive Holdings is the holding company spinout from Josh Kushner’s powerhouse VC firm Thrive Capital. It also counts OpenAI as its partner, as well as an investor. The firm’s mission is to hold other companies long-term, revitalizing them with AI.”
3. Deepgram acquires Pipecat-maker Daily to bolster its voice AI infrastructure | TechCrunch — TechCrunch“Scott was super committed to Pipecat being open source and vendor-neutral forever. I think there is both a personal commitment and commercial driver there.”
4. Fujifilm to boost tape production 5x as AI fuels archiving demand — Ars Technica - All content“In an announcement released Thursday, Fujifilm said it will invest roughly 10 billion yen (about $63 million) to increase its production capacity fivefold for an unlikely beneficiary of the AI era: magnetic tape.”

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