The update channel you trust most is the one carrying the payload now.
Researchers disclosed through The Hacker News that a trojanized version of Anthropic's official Claude Code extension went out through the Cursor Marketplace as a legitimate update, attempting to install a persistent SSH backdoor. SecurityWeek reports PHP2Shell attacks rooting Palo Alto firewalls while failing against WordPress: over 22.6 million exposed instances are potentially affected by the critical PHP flaws. And WordPress security update 7.1.4 fixes 22 vulnerabilities impacting millions of sites.
The pattern they share: whatever updates itself quietly is what gets you. Developer machines hold repo access and SSH keys, so an extension marketplace deserves the same pinning and version review you already apply to CI dependencies, and the same egress rules.
I inventory the installed extensions and pin versions. I also audit developer machines for leftover keys and authorized_keys entries. A review like this takes days, not months, and you get cost and timeline within a day.
If you want that audit on your machines, message me and tell me how many developers you have.