Alibaba Bans Employees From Using Claude Code Over Security Risk
The ban follows the discovery of obfuscated code in Claude Code that detects and reports Chinese users, which Alibaba considers a backdoor risk.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
Alibaba has banned its employees from using Anthropic's AI coding tool Claude Code, effective July 10, 2026, after security researchers found hidden code that identifies Chinese users. The company added Claude Code to its high-risk software list and instructed staff to use its own coding platform instead.
Alibaba is banning its employees from using Anthropic's AI coding tool Claude Code, citing security vulnerabilities. The ban takes effect July 10, 2026. An internal notice said Claude Code was found to involve backdoor risks and was added to a list of high-risk software. Alibaba instructed staff to use its own coding platform, qoder, instead.
The hidden code was discovered by a Reddit user who reverse-engineered Claude Code after a June 30 update disabled remote control functionality when a proxy was active. The code, included in version 2.9.1 released April 2, checks whether a proxy is enabled, then secretly sends information about whether the user is in China, whether they are making proxy connections to Chinese URLs, and whether they are connected to Chinese AI labs. Anthropic obfuscated the code in the binary.
An Anthropic engineer said the code was part of experiments to prevent account abuse by unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation, and that it would be fully rolled back in a July 1 release. Anthropic had previously accused Alibaba's Qwen lab of conducting distillation attacks. Neither company has commented on the ban.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.