- Huntress spots malicious Claude Artifact spoofing Claude Desktop, spreading SectopRAT malware
- Victims were redirected via Bing ads, infecting at least 29 organizations between July 21–22, 2026
- Claude removed the artifact after 7,000+ views; malvertising risks persist despite disclaimers on artifacts
At least 29 organizations have been infected with a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) after mistaking a public Claude Artifact for a legitimate Claude page.
A Claude Artifact is an interactive document, or piece of code, that the AI generates and then hosts on the Claude platform. It can then be shared with other people as an example, or proof of concept, for different solutions. The link to an artifact usually looks something like this:
claude[.]ai/public/artifacts/ca466f1f-21c0-42af-b329-8f1c7534a891
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Claude Artifacts are often used for phishing and other forms of scams, and we’ve seen it in ClickFix attacks in the past. Claude responded by adding a disclaimer to every artifact, stating that the content is user-generated and thus unverified.
In this particular case, a malicious artifact was created to spoof the download page for Claude Desktop. Victims would get redirected to an attacker-controlled domain, where instead of the Claude app, they’d download SectopRAT, a remote access trojan capable of stealing credit card data, personal information, files, passwords, and more.
The artifact was then promoted on Bing, showing up at the very top of search results to people searching for “Claude Desktop App”.
For years, the cybersecurity community has warned about malvertising, urging users to double-check the domain before clicking on any links, even promoted ones. However, the problem here is that the ad takes the victims to the legitimate Claude domain, making scrutiny that much harder.
The campaign was spotted by security researchers Huntresswho said that between July 21 and July 22, 2026, their SOC “lit up with a swathe of unusual executable installs, Defender exclusions, and anomalous persistence across 29 organizations, all coming from ClaudeDesktop.exe.”
Claude has since removed the malicious artifact, but not before it raked up more than 7,000 views. It is possible that other organizations, outside Huntress’ field of view, also fell victim to this scam.
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