5 ms·

So purely from a hacker perspective, I'm amused at the whining. Like, a corporation had a weakness you could exploit to get free/cheap thing. Fair game. Then

So purely from a hacker perspective, I'm amused at the whining. Like, a corporation had a weakness you could exploit to get free/cheap thing. Fair game. Then someone shares the exploit with a bunch of script kiddies, they exploit it to the Nth degree, and the company immediately notices and shuts everyone down. Like, my dudes, what did you think was going to happen? You treasure these little tricks, use them cautiously, and only share them sparingly. They can last for years if you carefully fly under the radar, before they're fixed by accident when another system is changed. THEN you share tales of your exploits for fame and internet points. And instead, you integrate your exploit into hip new thing, share it at scale, write blog posts and short form video content about it, basically launch a DDoS against the service you're exploiting, and then are shocked when the exploit gets patched and whine about your free thing getting taken away? Like, what did you expect was going to happen?

newalexandria 8mo ago
literally this is why we can't have nice things.
miroljub 8mo ago
> So purely from a hacker perspective, I'm amused at the whining. > Like, a corporation had a weakness you could exploit to get free/cheap thing. Fair game. From a pure hacker perspective, I'm surprised there are people calling a legitimate usage a "weakness you could exploit"? What weakness? What exploit? People have been using it in a way that was technically possible. And they paid for it, many purchased the product specifically because of it. Then Google unilaterally changed the TOS of a product people already purchased and started pulling the rug. And again, there are people who call themselves hackers who approve of that? Even worse, they call people calling out Google for their monopolistic behavior whining.
- novaleaf 8mo ago
  Arn't they yoinking an OAuth token for replay in the Claw app? If so, I don't think anybody who knows how auth works could feign complete innocence.
  - gck1 8mo ago
    People got banned for calling `gemini -p` (non-interactive mode) from wrappers like pi or opencode, too. I understand how grabbing an oauth token via reverse engineering could be a ToS violation. But there's no other purpose for the `-p` flag other than to use it with a wrapper. Unless people enjoy having interactive conversations via non-interactive mode for some reason. Even their documentation clearly states this flag exists for "building custom AI tools" [1]. How is OpenCode, OpenClaw etc not a "custom AI tool", where exactly is the line drawn? This is just a rug pull. [1] https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/c7237f0c795cde3f7b1efdb69dd6d16890266fff/docs/cli/tutorials/automation.md#build-your-own-custom-ai-tools https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/c7237f0c795...
    - saalweachter 8mo ago
      Two kinds of oauth tokens at play here. Tokens like those generated by the gemini CLI, accounted to the user and metered so you're charged every million or so tokens. Tokens like those internal to the Antigravity app, accounted to the product (which is why this was noticed -- the resources allotted to the app were being exhausted) and not metered per token (which is why everyone was trying to use them for everything). As the other commenter said, the first person to do this definitely knew what they were doing. All the script kiddies who piled on after, probably not, but that's also part of why "script kiddy" is a derogatory term. Not only do they usually not understand the scripts they run, they also typically do not understand the risks associated with them.
- rolymath 8mo ago
  Google changed the ToS to disallow this usage? I'm pretty sure it was disallowed from the beginning
- saalweachter 8mo ago
  I mean, the "exploit" is really "we have an access key with overly-broad permissions and poor monitoring", but that's ... also kind of like 70% of old hacker stories? "The gate code is 1234" "If you punch in this code it tricks the phone network into thinking you're an operator" "The credentials 'guest'/'guest' work on this network". You probably could have had five, ten people using the Antigravity API key for whatever and even if someone noticed it probably wouldn't have been worth the time to fix. But it's like you learn the gate code for the employee parking lot and instead of just quietly enjoying free parking you start punching in the code and waving more and more cars into the lot until it's jammed full, and then complain when the code's changed and they post a guard outside checking IDs.
  - tapvt 8mo ago
    This is where my mind went. A curious person or two poking around is one thing. A few hundred, or thousands, of "AI enthusiasts," or however you'd like to imagine OpenClaw users, could likely approach the scale of "a problem."
- ValentineC 8mo ago
  > What weakness? What exploit? People have been using it in a way that was technically possible. And they paid for it, many purchased the product specifically because of it. It's technically possible, but Google didn't provide a feature allowing the creation of Antigravity or Gemini CLI API keys for use outside the respective apps.
- bigyabai 8mo ago
  > they call people calling out Google for their monopolistic behavior whining. Google's monopoly is not in AI, it's advertisement. When you accuse them of ridiculous and unfounded crimes, you're diluting the chance of Google being held accountable. As someone that wants to see Google ripped apart by the FTC, we can't just lie and say everything Google does is criminal.
  - 8note 8mo ago
    the monopoly here is on web indexing, isnt it?
    - otterley 8mo ago
      Nope. Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, and Kagi all have more-or-less complete indices. There's no moat around scraping the public Web.
      - xnx 8mo ago
        Ddg has a miniscule index, and that exists mainly just to say they have one.
      - neodymiumphish 8mo ago
        I’m a Kagi user, but I understood this recent post by the Kagi team to mean that they do not index the web themselves and that it’s nearly impossible for them to do so. https://blog.kagi.com/waiting-dawn-search https://blog.kagi.com/waiting-dawn-search
        otterley 8mo ago
        My mistake. Looks like they license it from others.
        millzlane 8mo ago
        To me it seems like it's impossible because they can't reorder bing search results or mixed them with other results. Or by their own admission because Google doesn't have a search API anymore. Unless I'm misreading. It's basically "Bing or Google wont allow us to use their products how we want to." And "It will take us over 20 years and lots of money to gain market share." I'm paraphrasing here of course. But it doesn't seem impossible. I mean I don't think it's easy either. I also want to add that I don't want to live in a world with only one search engine.
JKCalhoun 8mo ago
Kind of a built-in feature of a Cool Thing is that it will get found/shared/widespread. (See Napster.)
mschuster91 8mo ago
> You treasure these little tricks, use them cautiously, and only share them sparingly. They can last for years if you carefully fly under the radar, before they're fixed by accident when another system is changed. THEN you share tales of your exploits for fame and internet points. It's the same with vulnerabilities in slot machines. Damn rare but they exist - in 2014, when I worked in that industry, one gang made a big bang: in a single night, casinos across Germany had to say goodbye to probably 10 million € [1]. Of course, that vulnerability made massive waves... but from what I heard back then, it had been circulating for many months beforehand. Of course, 10 million € is nothing to sneeze at, but keeping a low profile could have made everyone in the know far more profit. [1] https://www.t-online.de/digital/aktuelles/id_68982394/software-fehler-macht-gluecksspielautomaten-zu-geldmaschinen.html https://www.t-online.de/digital/aktuelles/id_68982394/softwa...
- tda 8mo ago
  I fondly remember finding and exploiting a buggy slot machine on the night the Euro got introduced. A classmate (I never played slot machines) made some money but didn't understand what was going on. I observed and it became apparent (in my slightly intoxicated state) the machine would pay out 2 Euro coins where is should pay out 20 cents. And when playing a 1 Euro game, you would often "win" 80 cents. Pay-out immediately and you got 8 Euro. Of course after a few rounds, the 2 Euro coins ran out and it would do some RNG to pay out 1 Euro with 80% chance. Don't know if I tried feeding it back the 2 Euro coins, I recall just made enough to have a free new years eve
  - mschuster91 8mo ago
    that was possibly just some attendant accidentally messing up which hopper they refilled (or with which coins), or someone screwed up the assignment on the control board which hopper was connected to which bus identifier. Reminds me I gotta eventually write up what I found reverse-engineering the one armed bandit in my basement LOL
  - ValentineC 8mo ago
    How did something like this not pass a Monte Carlo simulation, which I'd assume they'd conduct in an audit?
RobotToaster 8mo ago
> you could exploit to get free/cheap thing $249/mo isn't cheap
- panarky 8mo ago
  If you pay $249 to get $1,200 of compute, "cheap" seems like the right word.
lucky-rathore 8mo ago
wise. couldn't agree more. I

newalexandria 8mo ago

literally this is why we can't have nice things.

miroljub 8mo ago

> So purely from a hacker perspective, I'm amused at the whining. > Like, a corporation had a weakness you could exploit to get free/cheap thing. Fair game. From a pure hacker perspective, I'm surprised there are people calling a legitimate usage a "weakness you could exploit"? What weakness? What exploit? People have been using it in a way that was technically possible. And they paid for it, many purchased the product specifically because of it. Then Google unilaterally changed the TOS of a product people already purchased and started pulling the rug. And again, there are people who call themselves hackers who approve of that? Even worse, they call people calling out Google for their monopolistic behavior whining.

novaleaf 8mo ago
Arn't they yoinking an OAuth token for replay in the Claw app? If so, I don't think anybody who knows how auth works could feign complete innocence.
- gck1 8mo ago
  People got banned for calling `gemini -p` (non-interactive mode) from wrappers like pi or opencode, too. I understand how grabbing an oauth token via reverse engineering could be a ToS violation. But there's no other purpose for the `-p` flag other than to use it with a wrapper. Unless people enjoy having interactive conversations via non-interactive mode for some reason. Even their documentation clearly states this flag exists for "building custom AI tools" [1]. How is OpenCode, OpenClaw etc not a "custom AI tool", where exactly is the line drawn? This is just a rug pull. [1] https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/c7237f0c795cde3f7b1efdb69dd6d16890266fff/docs/cli/tutorials/automation.md#build-your-own-custom-ai-tools https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/c7237f0c795...
  - saalweachter 8mo ago
    Two kinds of oauth tokens at play here. Tokens like those generated by the gemini CLI, accounted to the user and metered so you're charged every million or so tokens. Tokens like those internal to the Antigravity app, accounted to the product (which is why this was noticed -- the resources allotted to the app were being exhausted) and not metered per token (which is why everyone was trying to use them for everything). As the other commenter said, the first person to do this definitely knew what they were doing. All the script kiddies who piled on after, probably not, but that's also part of why "script kiddy" is a derogatory term. Not only do they usually not understand the scripts they run, they also typically do not understand the risks associated with them.
rolymath 8mo ago
Google changed the ToS to disallow this usage? I'm pretty sure it was disallowed from the beginning
saalweachter 8mo ago
I mean, the "exploit" is really "we have an access key with overly-broad permissions and poor monitoring", but that's ... also kind of like 70% of old hacker stories? "The gate code is 1234" "If you punch in this code it tricks the phone network into thinking you're an operator" "The credentials 'guest'/'guest' work on this network". You probably could have had five, ten people using the Antigravity API key for whatever and even if someone noticed it probably wouldn't have been worth the time to fix. But it's like you learn the gate code for the employee parking lot and instead of just quietly enjoying free parking you start punching in the code and waving more and more cars into the lot until it's jammed full, and then complain when the code's changed and they post a guard outside checking IDs.
- tapvt 8mo ago
  This is where my mind went. A curious person or two poking around is one thing. A few hundred, or thousands, of "AI enthusiasts," or however you'd like to imagine OpenClaw users, could likely approach the scale of "a problem."
ValentineC 8mo ago
> What weakness? What exploit? People have been using it in a way that was technically possible. And they paid for it, many purchased the product specifically because of it. It's technically possible, but Google didn't provide a feature allowing the creation of Antigravity or Gemini CLI API keys for use outside the respective apps.
bigyabai 8mo ago
> they call people calling out Google for their monopolistic behavior whining. Google's monopoly is not in AI, it's advertisement. When you accuse them of ridiculous and unfounded crimes, you're diluting the chance of Google being held accountable. As someone that wants to see Google ripped apart by the FTC, we can't just lie and say everything Google does is criminal.
- 8note 8mo ago
  the monopoly here is on web indexing, isnt it?
  - otterley 8mo ago
    Nope. Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, and Kagi all have more-or-less complete indices. There's no moat around scraping the public Web.
    - xnx 8mo ago
      Ddg has a miniscule index, and that exists mainly just to say they have one.
    - neodymiumphish 8mo ago
      I’m a Kagi user, but I understood this recent post by the Kagi team to mean that they do not index the web themselves and that it’s nearly impossible for them to do so. https://blog.kagi.com/waiting-dawn-search https://blog.kagi.com/waiting-dawn-search
      - otterley 8mo ago
        My mistake. Looks like they license it from others.
      - millzlane 8mo ago
        To me it seems like it's impossible because they can't reorder bing search results or mixed them with other results. Or by their own admission because Google doesn't have a search API anymore. Unless I'm misreading. It's basically "Bing or Google wont allow us to use their products how we want to." And "It will take us over 20 years and lots of money to gain market share." I'm paraphrasing here of course. But it doesn't seem impossible. I mean I don't think it's easy either. I also want to add that I don't want to live in a world with only one search engine.

JKCalhoun 8mo ago

Kind of a built-in feature of a Cool Thing is that it will get found/shared/widespread. (See Napster.)

mschuster91 8mo ago

> You treasure these little tricks, use them cautiously, and only share them sparingly. They can last for years if you carefully fly under the radar, before they're fixed by accident when another system is changed. THEN you share tales of your exploits for fame and internet points. It's the same with vulnerabilities in slot machines. Damn rare but they exist - in 2014, when I worked in that industry, one gang made a big bang: in a single night, casinos across Germany had to say goodbye to probably 10 million € [1]. Of course, that vulnerability made massive waves... but from what I heard back then, it had been circulating for many months beforehand. Of course, 10 million € is nothing to sneeze at, but keeping a low profile could have made everyone in the know far more profit. [1] https://www.t-online.de/digital/aktuelles/id_68982394/software-fehler-macht-gluecksspielautomaten-zu-geldmaschinen.html https://www.t-online.de/digital/aktuelles/id_68982394/softwa...

tda 8mo ago
I fondly remember finding and exploiting a buggy slot machine on the night the Euro got introduced. A classmate (I never played slot machines) made some money but didn't understand what was going on. I observed and it became apparent (in my slightly intoxicated state) the machine would pay out 2 Euro coins where is should pay out 20 cents. And when playing a 1 Euro game, you would often "win" 80 cents. Pay-out immediately and you got 8 Euro. Of course after a few rounds, the 2 Euro coins ran out and it would do some RNG to pay out 1 Euro with 80% chance. Don't know if I tried feeding it back the 2 Euro coins, I recall just made enough to have a free new years eve
- mschuster91 8mo ago
  that was possibly just some attendant accidentally messing up which hopper they refilled (or with which coins), or someone screwed up the assignment on the control board which hopper was connected to which bus identifier. Reminds me I gotta eventually write up what I found reverse-engineering the one armed bandit in my basement LOL
- ValentineC 8mo ago
  How did something like this not pass a Monte Carlo simulation, which I'd assume they'd conduct in an audit?

RobotToaster 8mo ago

> you could exploit to get free/cheap thing $249/mo isn't cheap

panarky 8mo ago
If you pay $249 to get $1,200 of compute, "cheap" seems like the right word.

lucky-rathore 8mo ago

wise. couldn't agree more. I