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Config Files That Run Code: Supply Chain Security Blindspot
- sieabahlpark 5mo ago[dead]
- embedding-shape 5mo agoIs this why Windows Defender is prompting me 2-3 times a day to submit my codex/config.toml to Microsoft for "malware analysis"? I've said no every time so far, since my first thought is "What could even be hidden there?" when I see the dialog yet again, I'm guessing Microsoft would love to see how people use their competitors' products though.
- lstodd 5mo agoYou might as well click yes, since it's all been uploaded as telemetry anyways.
- IcyWindows 5mo agoCitation needed
- giancarlostoro 5mo agoHell I've seen things that shouldn't be up there just scooped up by Microsoft, I had to opt-out because it was just showing my PII look ups into my Microsoft accounts search history. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-search-and-privacy-99fb8251-7260-1cd6-1bbb-15c2370eb168 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-search-a... The final straw for me was when I saw that Microsoft Defender by default could send files to their servers for inspection, and I couldn't see what was sent previously, nor was this an opt-in option, it was on by default. I have anything from PII to highly proprietary things on my computer, I don't need them being "flagged" by Microsoft for arbitrary reasons. I have been on Linux full time for the last few years since.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Tangurena2 5mo agoI've heard about these attacks but never really had the time to understood what was happening. Some of our junior devs use VS Code, so now we have something to point them at.
- MeetingsBrowser 5mo agoOnly juniors are suing VSCode? What are others using?
- stronglikedan 5mo agoprob Cursor (also affected). at least that's preferred in my org
- vikramkr 5mo agoPoint them at for what?
- ktm5j 5mo agoVS Code will helpfully warn you when you open a folder that has a git repository.. it asks if you trust the developers since opening the folder could result in bad things happening. So this might not be such a big deal for VS Code users.
- ceejayoz 5mo agoYou know they're just gonna click yes, right? That prompt is just there so they can say "your fault!"
- ktm5j 5mo agoWell, in that case it totally is their fault...
- acdha 5mo agoI think that assumption is very dangerous: if your editor only prompts when you first open the project, it won’t help when that project is compromised later or if you checkout a merge request from someone untrustworthy/compromised and are mentally thinking “my project is safe” even though you’re a single gh/glab command away from that directory having anything an outside party wants.
- bpt3 5mo agoIt's far from a blindspot. People have been yelling about this from the rooftops for the last several years. No one cares about security. People used to care for a fairly short period of time after something bad happened to them, but even that seems to have gone by the wayside as breaches, leaks, and use of exploited code has become normalized.
- mikepurvis 5mo agoIt's always been a discussion in packaging, around build/install/configure time, think like setup.py, Debian's postinst, etc. The rise of editors that will own your system just by browsing to the wrong folder without opening or running anything is relatively speaking newer, but I think most people in HN audience should be able to intuit some of the risks, especially when untrusted PRs and semi-trusted LLM bots are in the mix with your "trusted" codebase.
- pixl97 5mo ago>but I think most people in HN audience should be able to intuit some of the risks Only a small subset of the worlds programmers are on HN, and one might assume they are more security aware then those that are not. Which means there's a shit load of people opening stuff they shouldn't be.
- bpt3 5mo ago> The rise of editors that will own your system just by browsing to the wrong folder without opening or running anything is relatively speaking newer, but I think most people in HN audience should be able to intuit some of the risks, especially when untrusted PRs and semi-trusted LLM bots are in the mix with your "trusted" codebase. This is kind of my point. People are doing things that are objectively stupid from a security perspective on a daily basis, and actively rejecting the idea of protecting themselves because they keep doing it after either identifying some risk themselves, being told about it directly, or being told about how others were negatively impacted by the same actions. And in my opinion, the benefits they get from these changes to their dev environment are negligible, and that's not even getting into how every file is potentially executable code to an LLM.
- hulitu 5mo ago> VS Code, Cursor, Claude Code, Gemini CLI, npm, Composer, and Bundler all support config files that can carry a shell command. I think they, and the CIA, call it a feature. Just like messenger apps which try to "execute" every "image file" or link thrown at them.
- continueops_com 5mo ago[dead]
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 5mo agoOkay, so can I configure VS Code to never run commands in config files?
- hadlock 5mo agoThis is MS Word Macros all over again
- Panzerschrek 5mo agoAs I understand one don't need to have AI agents or something similar to be pwned. It's enough to clone a repository using git, since it allows executing arbitrary hooks for post-checkout.
- Ferret7446 5mo agoThat's why cloning a git repo doesn't copy any hooks. There are software/devs that make sane security choices, and then there's the ones that don't (usually the younger/more modern ones)
- ryanshrott 5mo agoI started grepping .vscode/settings.json for terminal.integrated before opening any new repo. VS Code workspace settings being executable by default is quietly terrifying.