External risk intelligence

IntelliJ IDEA Remote Development Unauthorized Settings Modification

CVE advisorySeverity: CRITICAL (CVSS 10.0)

CVE-2026-64813

The vulnerability affects Remote Development sessions within an IDE. While these sessions involve network connectivity, they are typically established for developer access within private or controlled environments rather than being exposed as public-facing internet services.

Jetbrains Intellij Idea

before 2026.2

Halo Surface Signal: 2 out of 5 — less likely to be public-facing.

External exposure likelihood

Horizon Alert

Summary of the vulnerability and why it matters

A critical vulnerability has been identified in JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA that could allow unauthorized modification of settings during Remote Development sessions. This issue poses a significant risk due to its potential for widespread impact and high exploitability, necessitating a review of affected systems.

Settings can be changed without permission.
Affects remote development sessions in the IDE.
Confirm relevance and exposure for your environment.

Attack Path

How an attacker could exploit the issue

An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by initiating an unauthenticated connection to a vulnerable Remote Development session. This exposure allows them to tamper with the application's settings without any prior authorization, potentially leading to a complete compromise of the system.

Unauthenticated network access required.
Modifies settings within a session.
Leads to unauthorized system compromise.

Live Threat

Current exploitation, exposure, and threat context

A critical vulnerability in IntelliJ IDEA's Remote Development sessions could allow an unauthenticated attacker to modify application settings without authorization. This could affect the integrity and availability of the development environment when supported by the advisory.

Unauthorized settings modification.
Network access to development sessions.
Compromised development environment integrity.

Operational Fix

Recommended remediation, mitigation, and detection steps

Real-world ownership for this vulnerability likely falls to teams managing development environments and application platforms, potentially including application owners or platform engineering. The first practical step is to identify all instances of the affected technology, determine their exposure and business criticality, and then engage the accountable owner to plan remediation based on assessed risk.

Platform or application owners should take ownership.
Verify affected systems and their reachability first.
Plan remediation and coordinate with affected teams.

Supplementary metadata

CVSS vector

Validate whether this threat affects your internet-facing exposure.

Halo Threat Intelligence helps prioritize remediation with Halo Surface Signal and H/A/L/O context. Start exposure validation with a free external attack surface trial.

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Frequently asked questions

What is IntelliJ IDEA and how is it used?

IntelliJ IDEA is an integrated development environment (IDE) primarily used by software engineers to write, debug, and maintain code. It supports various programming languages and provides advanced tools like remote development, which allows developers to run the IDE backend on a server while using a local client to access the project. This setup enables teams to collaborate or work on resource-intensive tasks from remote machines.

How does CWE-602 apply to CVE-2026-64813?

This vulnerability is classified as CWE-602, which involves client-side enforcement of server-side security. In this context, the IDE fails to properly validate permissions during a remote session. Because the software assumes the client connection is trustworthy, it allows unauthorized modification of application settings. This weakness essentially lets an attacker bypass internal controls that should have restricted access to configuration changes.

Do I need to be authenticated to trigger this flaw?

No, authentication is not required to trigger this vulnerability. The flaw exists because the remote session mechanism accepts unauthenticated network connections. Simply having network reachability to a vulnerable remote development session is sufficient for an attacker to modify settings. Local configuration changes or sessions requiring pre-shared credentials that are not exposed over the network do not trigger this bug.

Is my development server at risk?

According to Halo Surface Signal, risk is unlikely if your environment is not exposed to the public internet. While the vulnerability allows for unauthorized settings changes, these remote development sessions are typically isolated within private, controlled internal networks. You should be concerned if your IDE backend instances are reachable from untrusted networks rather than being restricted to your secure corporate infrastructure.

How should I respond to this vulnerability?

Start by identifying all servers running JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA that facilitate remote development sessions. Verify which of these instances are accessible over your network and assess their business criticality. Once you have an inventory, coordinate with your platform engineering or development teams to verify if your specific environment is affected and plan for the necessary updates or configuration changes provided by JetBrains to mitigate the risk.

References

www.jetbrains.com/privacy-security/issues-fixed/

Written by Nicholas Merritt

Nicholas Merritt is VP of Security Solutions at Halo Security. With more than 25 years across application security, vulnerability prioritization, and offensive security, he helps teams translate threat data into practical exposure validation and remediation focus. He authors Halo Threat Intelligence CVE advisories using Halo Surface Signal and H/A/L/O context to prioritize internet-facing risk.