Unpatched Claude for Chrome Flaw Lets Extensions Read Gmail, Calendar

AI security firm Manifold says two vulnerabilities it reported to Anthropic in May remain exploitable in the latest version of Claude for Chrome, the company’s agentic browser extension.

According to Manifold, the flaws let a malicious browser extension trigger Claude into taking actions on a user’s behalf without any genuine click or approval from the victim. An attacker could exploit them to read Gmail messages, Google Docs documents, and calendar entries.

The core issue is related to a fix Anthropic shipped earlier this year in response to a similar vulnerability dubbed ClaudeBleed. That update restricted which prompts an outside webpage could feed into Claude, narrowing the extension’s exposure to a fixed set of pre-approved tasks.

Manifold found that the mechanism used to activate those tasks doesn’t verify whether a click actually came from a real user, meaning another extension can fake the interaction and set the process in motion.

In the extension’s default setting, the attack triggers a confirmation prompt before anything sensitive happens. However, if a user has enabled the extension’s more autonomous mode (‘Act without asking’), the attacker’s action can proceed without any visible warning.

Manifold also flagged a second, related design gap: a way for Claude’s side panel to launch directly into that no-confirmation mode based on a parameter in its own URL, with no user action required to unlock it.

The researchers noted that this is not something an attacker can currently exploit, since only the extension itself is meant to construct that URL. But they argue it’s a structural risk, and any future bug that lets an outside script influence how that URL gets built could hand an attacker silent control over a user’s connected accounts.

Manifold reported its findings to Anthropic on May 21, shortly after the public disclosure of the ClaudeBleed research. The AI giant described the list of pre-approved tasks as an initial mitigation for ClaudeBleed until a complete fix is rolled out. However, Manifold says none of the eight versions released since appear to patch the vulnerabilities, including the latest 1.0.80.

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