Visual Studio Code CVE-2026-47284

User interaction is required (UI:R per CVSS vector) - the victim must actively open or interact with a malicious artifact within VS Code, such as a crafted workspace folder, file, or configuration. No authentication or elevated privileges are required from the attacker side (PR:N), and attack complexity is low (AC:L), meaning no special race conditions or environment preparation is needed beyond delivering the malicious artifact. Exploitation is limited by the requirement for developer-side interaction and is therefore not automatable at scale without a social engineering or supply chain delivery component. Exploitation is further bounded to confidentiality impact only (C:H/I:N/A:N) - an attacker cannot modify data or cause a denial of service via this vulnerability alone. Affected versions span 1.0.0 through 1.123.0; users on 1.123.1 or later are not affected.

The NVD CVSS score of 6.5 (Medium) reflects a meaningful but bounded risk profile: high confidentiality impact with no integrity or availability impact, network-reachable, low complexity, and no required privileges (PR:N) - but user interaction (UI:R) is mandatory, which limits mass automated exploitation. No EPSS score was provided in the intelligence sources, so probabilistic exploitation likelihood cannot be quantified. There is no CISA KEV entry and no POC has been identified, meaning active exploitation is not confirmed. The combination of PR:N and UI:R most closely maps to a social engineering or malicious artifact delivery scenario rather than a purely opportunistic scan-and-exploit attack. Developer workstations are high-value targets given the density of credentials and source code they handle, so despite the medium CVSS score, organizations with developers using VS Code 1.0.0-1.123.0 should treat this as a priority patch, particularly in environments where developers open untrusted files, repositories, or extensions.

An attacker crafts a malicious VS Code workspace or file (such as a repository, a settings file, or a specially constructed document) and socially engineers a developer into opening it within VS Code. Upon opening, the IDE triggers an unintended network request or data exposure mechanism that transmits sensitive information - such as environment variables, open file contents, or authentication tokens - to an attacker-controlled server. No public exploit code has been identified at time of analysis, so the exact trigger mechanism has not been publicly demonstrated.