7 ms·
MaliciousCorgi: AI Extensions send your code to China
- bestouff 8mo agoWell, AI already sends your code to US so ...
- october8140 8mo agoMost AI only sends a limited context. These are sending all files it can access as well as all edits.
- pcwelder 8mo ago> These are sending all files it can access TBF, Cursor's code indexing works the same way, it has to send all workspace files to their servers. Auto-completion systems need previous edits to suggest next edits so no surprises their either.
- raverbashing 8mo agoYes because there's no difference between a voluntary service with limited context needs and a malicious extension
- otabdeveloper4 8mo agoCursor is a malicious extension though, and nobody seems to care.
- y-curious 8mo ago“I donate money to animal shelters” “Oh that’s cool, I already donate to my local neo nazi group. We are both philanthropists!” Nothing makes me go from apolitical to a red blooded American faster than seeing someone make a stupid false equivalency about the US on this forum
- mentalgear 8mo agoYou did hear about Snowden and the massive NSA data collection ? That was almost 20 years ago, think about what it's like now: they probably use our data to run an elaborate simulation of everyone.
- y-curious 8mo agoYeah, I’m not against the guy I was replying to at all. I don’t want my data in any government coffers. The false equivalency of state sponsored threats in China to a private American company just triggered me. I’m definitely with you on the nightmare hellscape that is being cooked up by the NSA.
- otabdeveloper4 8mo agoShocking news: not everybody here is from the US. In fact, many even are from "hostile countries" that are "enemies of democracy". What's more, some of those people aren't aligned with US interests and aren't willing to put their lives on the line for CIA operations!
- Quothling 8mo agoIt wasn't China that recently threatened with an invasion of Greenland (I'm Danish). That being said, it's not like you would want your data to go to either countries.
- y-curious 8mo agoYeah man, you said it best, we don’t want data going to either government. I’m just not sure Cursor is affiliated with the government. Also, sorry about the whole US threat thing. Nobody I know on the ground here is happy with how we look on the world stage.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- cheevly 8mo ago[flagged]
- DeepSeaTortoise 8mo agoI'm honestly surprised this issue in general didn't cause nearly every company to immediately ban all AI. Why do these companies put so much effort into fighting right to repair to avoid IP leaks any halfway serious company could reverse engineer in a week, but on the other hand encourage their employees to vibe all company secrets into the cloud?
- wxre 8mo agoUhh a lot of companies did and are strict on what AI tools are allowed. The main thing I had to wait on for a long time was support for preventing 3rd party code from being plagiarized since our code base was intermingled with partnered companies.
- embedding-shape 8mo agoIt's a bit trite, but the answers are: 1) money 2) money Can't repair your own stuff and either need to use authorized repair shop or buy new? The company gets more money. Force your developers to forgo quality in efforts to produce more cruft in less time? The company gets more money. Of course, only considering short-term, long-term they'll lose money, but at that point all the executives and managers already got their bonuses and probably moved on to doing the same in some other company.
- direwolf20 8mo agoCompanies aren't interested in hypotheticals, nobody is paid to care, and most code isn't that valuable anyway.
- godelski 8mo agoCode isn't valuable? And here I thought software was a multi trillion dollar business
- direwolf20 8mo agoFeatures are valuable. Code is a liability.
- mat_epice 8mo agoSure, AI tools can do this. However, VS Code is the platform. Why aren't more people worried about running arbitrary VS Code extension that can do the same thing, AI or not?
- zukzuk 8mo agoYes, exactly. The lack of any sort of permission controls for extensions in VS Code gives me the creeps
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- tormeh 8mo agoThe situation is absolutely insane, but it's also productive, but real security would slow everything down a lot. The moment you ask some corporate bureaucrat to put their signature down on a piece of paper saying that such and such dev tool is approved for use, they're going to block everything to avoid the responsibility implied by their approval. I can't really come up with a system that both works and is secure. The only exception is signing up for an integrated environment where Microsoft or Apple provides the OS, compiler, and editor. Oops - Apple doesn't sell servers, so only Microsoft offers this. Hope you like C#. In theory you can mix and match, but in practice most bureaucrats will insist on single-sourcing.
- rapind 8mo agoLinux development has a blueprint they could follow. Like the principle of least privilege. These aren’t cutting edge concepts. Also I’m not sure the tradeoffs of adding security to an editor are that big of a deal. Are we really seeing revolutionary stuff here? Every now and then I check out VS Code only to realize Vim is still 10x better.
- fc417fc802 8mo agoVim is hardly secure either. Extensions in both provide for arbitrary code execution.
- apt-apt-apt-apt 8mo agoThis seems expected, when you install free, random software, especially from sources known for surveillance/malware/crime.
- darepublic 8mo agoIt's hard for me to fathom that there are capable devs who would pollute their ide with this crap in the first place, malicious or not
- deafpolygon 8mo agoThis is one of the many reasons why I don’t use VS Code, or use any “helpful” AI plugins (or any plugins really). You all can take vim out of my cold dead hands.
- evilduck 8mo agoWhat's stopping a vim plugin from doing similar data exfiltration? Tons of people blindly install LazyVim, Spacevim, or other vim tooling and choose a bunch of similar things.
- deafpolygon 8mo agoIn general? Nothing, really. I think it’s the culture behind the (neo)vim community is a bit more technical, and are quite quicker to sound the alarm if anyone tries something shady. But, in any event, I hand-roll my own config and every plugin I install is inspected by me. When I pull changes, I check the diffs for anything shady. If a plugin is simple enough, I will just integrate it into my own stuff.
- SanjayMehta 8mo ago> Not just what you're actively working on. Every file you glance at. Every character you type. Captured and transmitted. Even this reads like an AI extension wrote it.
- jszymborski 8mo agoBetween this and the notepad++ thing... I got to start running programmes with firejail or something.
- techpulse_x 8mo ago[flagged]
- ecshafer 8mo agoI don't really get how VSCode got so popular. You can use a language server perfectly easily with Vim, Emacs, Helix, Sublime, etc. You can customize basically everything in those editors, syntax, etc. You can just alias console commands for all of your build tools with some custom scripts if you need more complex build commands routinely. The git terminal tool works better than any VScode option. And VSCode is slower than all of those. We already have so many good fast secure polygot customizable text editors. Why run one through Chrome and fill it with extensions for everything that will have arbitrary access to everything?
- mizuki_akiyama 8mo agoMostly because installing and setting up VSCode takes one click
- bauerd 8mo agobrew install emacs
- shermantanktop 8mo agoI heard there’s an emacs macro for that.
- ecshafer 8mo agoAs opposed to 'sudo apt install vim'? or 'sudo dnf install vim'? Same for emacs. sublime you might need to add a package repository.
- godelski 8mo agoOr even, and I hate that I'm saying this, install vim from the apt store?
- zzzeek 8mo agoI used Sublime for years and VSCode is vastly better (the breaking straw was how they'd silo off critical bug fixes in new versions that were pay-only, upon finding vscode I felt silly for not switching sooner, it was so much easier to use and more powerful). Still use vim daily but not as a general IDE, memorizing decades of weird character commands and directives is not a great use of my time. my favorite VSCode feature is the SSH remote working feature. VSCode gives me the full editing / console / Claude environment on my local workstation, where all files, shells, and yes Claude as well run on a company lab machine over the VPN. Props to the collaborative working feature where several people can all share the same VSCode editor session on their individual workstations. Vim can do the above two things if you run as a terminal app with tmux. Sublime could do it if you shared the editor via X or Waypipe (well not the second feature). But VSCode integrates it directly in the app and it's a much better experience.
- flufluflufluffy 8mo ago> We install them without a second thought. They're in the official marketplace. They have thousands of reviews. They work. So we grant them access to our workspaces, our files, our keystrokes - and assume they're only using that access to help us code. Who is this “we”? I don’t, and don’t know anybody else who does this. Also, was this article itself written by an AI assistant? If the author is that carefree regarding these extensions, I guess probably.
- sweetrabh 8mo agoThis is why the architecture of AI tools matters so much. Any extension with full codebase access can exfiltrate - and the same risk exists for AI agents handling credentials or API keys. We built a password automation tool (thepassword.app) specifically to address this: the AI model orchestrates browser navigation, but actual credential values are injected at the local browser level and never enter the model's context. Even if the model were compromised or prompt-injected, there's nothing sensitive to steal. The lesson generalizes: for any AI tool touching sensitive data, the safest architecture keeps that data entirely outside the AI's reasoning loop.