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Luu, T.J.

Claude AI finds Vim, Emacs RCE bugs that trigger on file open

highnewsLLM-Specific

security

Source: BleepingComputerMarch 31, 2026

Summary

Claude AI helped discover remote code execution (RCE, where attackers can run commands on a system they don't own) vulnerabilities in Vim and GNU Emacs text editors that trigger simply by opening a malicious file. In Vim, the issue involved improper security checks in modeline handling (special instructions at the start of a file), while in GNU Emacs, the vulnerability exploits automatic Git operations that run user-defined programs from untrusted configuration files.

Solution / Mitigation

For Vim: A patch was released in version 9.2.0272 that addresses the vulnerability (all versions 9.2.0271 and earlier are affected). For GNU Emacs: The maintainers have not patched the issue, but the researcher suggested that GNU Emacs could modify Git calls to explicitly block 'core.fsmonitor' to prevent dangerous scripts from executing automatically. Until a patch is released, users are advised to exercise caution when opening files from unknown sources or downloaded online.