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"this is an early experiment in carrying out an Xz attack by using an agent to build trust" Is this confirmed? There is the message from somebody claiming to b

by lukan 5mo ago

"this is an early experiment in carrying out an Xz attack by using an agent to build trust" Is this confirmed? There is the message from somebody claiming to be the original contributer claiming to have been hacked, but that was weird (1 h old github account) so other scenarios seem possible a) really a agent going off the rails b) the contributer trying to cover up that he let an agent run wild and now made more misstakes along the way So yes, it seems like an attack to me, but it is far from clear what really happened.

alexjurkiewicz 5mo ago
If the real credentials owner was running the agent, why do it from a new GitHub account? Someone's bug tracker account was hacked.
- m4rtink 5mo ago
  So far it looks like just their previously legit Fedora account got taken over & the other accounts (GitHub) then generated on demand as needed for whatever it was trying to achieve, right ? BTW, any idea what are the current requirements for creating a new GitHub account ? That could provide some information about if there was actually a person controlling thing thing at that moment to say provide wahtever was necessary to get the new GitHub account.
marcus_holmes 5mo ago
From the article: > "So not saying this was it, but an AI agent automated attempt at a Xz like compromise might really look very similar what we have just seen here." Without identifying and interviewing the attacker we can't confirm that's what they intended, and there's a possibility that it was just incompetence/ignorance/whatever, but we should probably treat it as an attempted attack even if it wasn't.
- srdjanr 5mo ago
  We should treat it as attempted attack in the sense of preparing for the next one, but I don't see why we should call it "attack" without any evidence
  - marcus_holmes 5mo ago
    If it looks like a duck...
  - account42 5mo ago
    We can call it an attack because the operator is responsible for the automation no matter what it does.
nottorp 5mo ago
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by lukan 5mo ago

alexjurkiewicz 5mo ago

If the real credentials owner was running the agent, why do it from a new GitHub account? Someone's bug tracker account was hacked.

m4rtink 5mo ago
So far it looks like just their previously legit Fedora account got taken over & the other accounts (GitHub) then generated on demand as needed for whatever it was trying to achieve, right ? BTW, any idea what are the current requirements for creating a new GitHub account ? That could provide some information about if there was actually a person controlling thing thing at that moment to say provide wahtever was necessary to get the new GitHub account.

marcus_holmes 5mo ago

From the article: > "So not saying this was it, but an AI agent automated attempt at a Xz like compromise might really look very similar what we have just seen here." Without identifying and interviewing the attacker we can't confirm that's what they intended, and there's a possibility that it was just incompetence/ignorance/whatever, but we should probably treat it as an attempted attack even if it wasn't.

srdjanr 5mo ago
We should treat it as attempted attack in the sense of preparing for the next one, but I don't see why we should call it "attack" without any evidence
- marcus_holmes 5mo ago
  If it looks like a duck...
- account42 5mo ago
  We can call it an attack because the operator is responsible for the automation no matter what it does.

nottorp 5mo ago

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