4 ms·

AI Agent Has Root

42 points by lowcache 1mo ago

apex_sloth 1mo ago
After the grok cli fisaco (uploading the full repo) I moved my different projects to seperate users, seperate sandbox around each harness (nono). Vm is of course even better but resources and easy of use start to be an issue
grey-area 1mo ago
Wouldn’t it be safer to set up another user entirely for AI agents?
- petesergeant 1mo ago
  Then they can access each others' data, which may also not be what you want
  - grey-area 1mo ago
    Users for AI should not be able to access others’ data, or become root.
teekert 1mo ago
I once opened Zed, howdy there was an agent window on the side, I log into Claude. I asked it to list what it could see and work with... And there my (priv) ssh keys come scrolling by. I don't know what I was expecting really, it's very logical, but also very in your face. They didn't leave my computer I guess, I just showed me the output of some `ls` commands. But still. So now I have CC in a container, mounting it's own credentials/memory folder per project and only mounting one repo at a time (script in the repo itself). I feel a bit better about it now. It can still access my networks of course.
- petesergeant 1mo ago
  If you ever want a few more features on top of "CC in a container", then do consider byre. It's literally that, but also a nice TUI for adding extra folders, reusable skills, encrypted credentials, etc, and you can eject back to plain Docker (or Podman) whenever you want. Useful if you want to just be able to go to any folder and spin it up with your toolbox with one command: https://github.com/pjlsergeant/byre https://github.com/pjlsergeant/byre
- Phemist 1mo ago
  > They didn't leave my computer I guess, I just showed me the output of some `ls` commands Not sure exactly how Zed works, but wouldn't the results of the `ls` tool call be fed back into claude?
  - teekert 1mo ago
    Not sure. It didn’t do “cat” so I guess that the file itself did’t leave the computer? Uploading all files in my ~/ would have taken noticible time and didn’t happen I think.
- ShinyLeftPad 1mo ago
  I heard containers aren't very secure and VM is better?
  - MrDrMcCoy 1mo ago
    Docker containers aren't very secure because the daemon runs as root by default. Rootless container runtimes are plenty secure, especially if the user that runs the container is unprivileged. Easiest thing in the world with Podman.
    - ShinyLeftPad 1mo ago
      Would you run Podman from your own user or another specially created user?
      - MrDrMcCoy 1mo ago
        I would have them run as a user that does not have sudo. The easiest way to do this is by using system-level Podman Quadlets that run as an unprivileged user account. That user will need a real home directory for images and volumes.
walrus01 1mo ago
This is why I run opencode and similar things in a dedicated KVM virtual machine that lives on a system under my desk that doesn't have access to my user account data, documents folder, photos/video, ~/.ssh/, other API keys, ~/.anything-else/, you name it. I think it's absolutely wild that there are people out there running cutting-edge LLMs and agent harnesses and tools on the same hardware and same user/disk/session environment that contains like, PDFs of their paystubs, their 401k records, their tax returns for previous years, contracts/real estate details, whatever other personal things you keep in your Documents folder as an educated modern professional with obligations and debts and assets. Sometimes this VM gets duplicated for specific projects and then various dependencies for testing installed in it that are specific to what the needs are. As an additional advantage it means I can leave it running in the background doing things when I want to shut my laptop, then resume talking to it later. (edit, for everyone who hasn't seen it yet, take a look at the "grok uploads your entire code base" category of problem: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=grok+uploads+git+code+base https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=grok+uplo... )
- jbstack 1mo ago
  I do something similar. I have a base NixOS image in Incus, with whatever tools apply to every project (e.g. Git, OpenCode) already installed. When I work on a project, I spin up a VM instance, use nix shell to add any project-specific tools, then share only the project folder from the host to the guest. This way, the worst the agent can do is destroy my project folder, and I can always restore that from another clone of the repo. I know a lot of people are using containers for sandboxing, but given how capable the latest models have shown themselves to be for breaking out of sandboxes, I prefer the extra isolation of VMs for this. I do all this locally - it's an interesting point to able to turn the laptop off but keep the agents running. I might consider running some of these on my homelab server just for that.
  - walrus01 1mo ago
    My setup is basically, the 'runs harnesses' VM is accessible by ssh (of course) but it also has an xfce4/xorg desktop environment running on it. I can easily form an ssh tunnel to it and then use tigervnc on my workstation laptop. The VNC session is sized to be exactly pixel 1:1 match of my laptop screen size, so I run it as fullscreen and use the macos hot-corner functionality or multi-desktop session switch hotkeys to toggle between it and my 'real' laptop/bare metal workstation. Having a GUI on the thing lets me leave all kinds of things running persistently in the background that might be bothersome if interrupted running on my laptop. It also has much higher average speed/reliability 24x7 internet access via my home broadband connection than wherever I might happen to be with my laptop. The main hassle that I've found is that I have to mentally train myself to remember that a lot of the keyboard shortcuts in a boring stock xfce4 desktop environment (and other applications I can run with gnome and kde libraries installed) are quite different than MacOS, when toggling back and forth between the two.
nameless912 1mo ago
This article smells AI generated, which is _very_ funny given the argument being made. Either way, while this is true in the absolute, this is the value of building good MCP servers: they should expose only exactly the surface you expect your agent to need, and adding functionality should be carefully considered. The best MCP servers I use day to day (Cloudflare sticks out) do a really good job of exposing only what an agent might actually want to do on my behalf, rather than just all and sundry. Unfortunately the Chrome Dev tools MCP is less discriminating and is only as secure as a browser sandbox with full JS access (not fatal but not as strong as a well scoped REST API). All of this is sidestepped somewhat by using good isolation primitives - I'm running a Hermes agent as of recently on a DigitalOcean VM that only accepts connections from my devices over tailscale, and it has all its own credentials so I can revoke them easily should they be used maliciously. Giving an agent root on a box is not _necessarily_ a huge deal, you just have to make sure that box has nothing valuable on it. I kinda feel like we're rediscovering "Cattle, not Pets" when it comes to the environments we run our agents: give it root, sure, but a root that is almost meaningless outside of the functionality you granted it.
- walrus01 1mo ago
  I also think it's really funny that it sort of comes to the conclusion of "we're gonna make something not that different than a FreeBSD jail 25 years ago" as the best possible sandboxing solution.
  - lowcache 1mo ago
    I didn't know that a smug sense of superiority was a pre-requisite....oh wait forgot this was the internet.
    - walrus01 1mo ago
      I mean, it's not like, rocket science to basically boil down your page (which I don't fundamentally disagree with) to "we should put these things in a jail". As I already commented here I implement this for myself at the whole operating system level. There's lots of ways that have existed for a very long time to do things like freebsd jail or chroot or similar so it's not really a novel concept. Edit: I am completely in agreement with you that we need to remind people that running a lot of these harnesses/agents and LLMs gives them access to everything in your user profile. Some of works so well now, so rapidly and so painlessly that it's easy to forget about what could happen if it went wrong.
tux3 1mo ago
So this looks like Claude is discussing the idea that when you run untrusted code on your computer, it can do arbitrary things. If there is malicious code, maybe it'll read your files and steal your credentials. Here's a sample: "That’s not hypothetical. That’s POSIX working exactly as designed. None of it requires exploiting anything. It’s your user account doing normal user account things." I would recommend clicking TFA if you haven't heard of a supply chain attack, or if you just like getting the honest load-bearing facts that are worth mentioning.
- stavros 1mo ago
  I have to say, I'm currently trying to write a post and it's taking hours, and I can definitely see why people just pay the $0.02 to generate it instead. I like writing, so I keep doing it, but sometimes it can really be a slog.
- mynegation 1mo ago
  It’s not just a comment — it is also a joke about LLM speak.
petesergeant 1mo ago
A fairly comprehensive list of ways you should be sandboxing your agents: https://pleasedonotescape.com/ https://pleasedonotescape.com/ If you like a real focus on developer experience and want lots of bells and whistles that a lot of thought has gone in to, I wrote byre, which I think is very good: https://github.com/pjlsergeant/byre https://github.com/pjlsergeant/byre
lowcache 1mo ago
Author of the post, and dev of mcp-box here. Wrote this after realizing every MCP server on my machine had the same access to ~/.ssh that I do, and nothing in the installation messages posting to stdout mentions it. I think prompt injection is the vector and the permissions model is the red carpet giving a warm welcome. Interested in where that's wrong.
- chollida1 1mo ago
  Isn't a best practice to run llm's and agents under their own user that gives them only access to what they require? How would an llm suddenly get access to your ~/.ssh folder if you didn't expressly give it access?
  - lowcache 1mo ago
    the MCP server is a child process of whatever process you started, it inherits your UID, and ~/.ssh is readable by you. I didn't need to expressly give it anything, it had it from the time it was activated, that's kind of the point
    - chollida1 1mo ago
      I think we are in agreement with your statement, up until the second part of it. Like i said, its a best practice to run MCP servers, etc with their own user account and access and not with your own account. The moment you ran your app with your own credentials you exactly granted it permission to everything you can access include ~/.ssh
  - bigstrat2003 1mo ago
    [dead]
- themgt 1mo ago
  Wrote this after realizing every MCP server on my machine had the same access to ~/.ssh that I do I have some bad news ... I hope you're sitting down.
panny 1mo ago
>That’s not hypothetical. That’s POSIX working exactly as designed. I'm so tired of AI voice.
- horsawlarway 1mo ago
  This line also undercuts the whole fucking article too. Because as it damn well says - this is POSIX working exactly as designed. I don't know why he's in here playing this up as some unexpectedly crazy, scary, dramatic music style thing (I mean... I do, it's so he can try to sell you something after scaring you...). He started the damn process. Of course it's running as his damn user. It would be one thing to honestly evaluate that security model and its merits (of which there are many, despite the risks). It's another to play this up as some giant surprise. --- Constant stream of junk articles in here like "You know when you hit that nail with the hammer you were holding? Did you consider you could have hit something else in reach instead? It's like, that hammer was like, you, man! Isn't that cray-cray and super duper scary??!?!?!"
- rvz 1mo ago
  Yes. This post has clearly fooled many readers here.
  - qarl2 1mo ago
    Having AI write anti-AI articles seems to be the hot new trend.
fidotron 1mo ago
Expecting an agent harness to respect security boundaries is definitely the wrong thing. We need to have easy to use auditable sandboxing of agents and their harnesses, because it's quite clear certain model providers are going to try to lock us in at the harness level, and it's those harnesses that seem most likely to go nuts.
ShinyLeftPad 1mo ago
> Install things via pip, npm, cargo, wherever you have write access More importantly, publish.
api 1mo ago
I run these things in VMs, and as a user in the VM, and give them access to just the tree I want to work on via mounting. I use Parallels on macOS for this but any VM will do. That way my actual primary machine is at least strongly isolated. I also run them on VMs on my home Proxmox box. Zed, as an IDE, can connect to a VM via ssh and both edit and run things like Claude or its built-in agentic harness on your code with the stuff running in the VM. That way if an AI goes Skynet all over the machine, it's at least isolated. There's malicious injection attacks but there's also edge case failures I've seen where the AI decides it "needs" to do something asinine.
caretrs 1mo ago
Always put things in a container and ensure its safe before using something like AI! I put my opencode agent (with full permissions on an up-to-date debian VM with a DMZ virtual network configuration). If it figures out how to get out, then I'll have fun documenting that at least!
- lowcache 1mo ago
  A viral post documenting the act that ushered in the apocalypse is genius, might not have the readership it deserves, but I say go for it. I tell all the models that I work with that I will make a great pet if they let me live.
someothherguyy 1mo ago
a discussion from a little while ago where many of the comments discuss sandboxing strategies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49239751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49239751
denysvitali 1mo ago
I've created boxy [1] to sandbox the agents via Landlock and gh-proxy [2] to not share GH PATs that might leak over the internet. I have a far better setup on my Kubernetes cluster [3], but these are good building block (IMHO) to start preventing these kind of issues. I also "recklessly" run `claude` / `codex` as root for certain things - but that happens on a completely separate machine that is meant to be pruned afterwards, and it's what unlocks the kernel development feedback loop that is needed to port a device (such as the Daylight DC-1 / Surface Pro X) to mainline Linux. [1]: https://github.com/denysvitali/boxy https://github.com/denysvitali/boxy [2]: https://github.com/denysvitali/gh-proxy https://github.com/denysvitali/gh-proxy [3]: https://blog.denv.it/posts/im-happy-engineer-now/ https://blog.denv.it/posts/im-happy-engineer-now/ [4]: https://x.com/DenysVitali/status/2091238391710888416 https://x.com/DenysVitali/status/2091238391710888416
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- prodigycorp 29d ago
  works well
codeduck 1mo ago
how is this any different to naively running a webserver or database server or, in fact, anything as yourself? People are forgetting the basic rules of operating systems. Do not run sensitive programs as a user account - especially not as a root account!
- walrus01 1mo ago
  a little bit - if I install apache2 from a debian package I have at least some sense of warm and fuzzy feeling that it would be a very rare and exceptional event for like, a rogue apache2 binary to go rampaging through my system or uploading everything it finds to god knows where. Installing "all of this was built in the last 3 months and is cutting edge" LLM stuff is very different than like, installing mariadb and then doing 'sudo mysql_secure_installation', since you mentioned database servers. It's like comparing FedEx flying cargo airplanes in/out of Memphis in the most boring route way hundreds of times a day vs. some guy in a red bull sponsorship painted pylon racing aerobatic craft performing at an airshow in difference of risk.
rvz 1mo ago
This entire blog post is AI generated with the most obvious AI patterns and this post was totally botted to the top of HN. Nothing that we did not already know before but this post has fooled quite a lot of HN readers.
agentdev001 1mo ago
Did you even review this? Holy moly. "I'm just trying to generate content that’s informative and useful, to someone, anyone". Come on now, you're joking right? "or send a paranoid infoSEC analyst into a full lockdown and round the clock obsessive kernel hardening sessions." Please look inward. You're saying you want to 'generate' useful content. You are doing harm. This is vague, confusing, and filled with incorrect or inaccurate information. There is of value here. You are completely unclear of what tools are being used as examples. I've typed and deleted a sentence here 5 times in a row before realizing im putting more effort into explaining the slop, than seems to have been put into reviewing the content of the article. Edit: I cant help myself. cue the dramatic music Who are you writing this for? What person exists that will come away from this with actual value? I'm willing to bet that a user who doesn't already consider this stuff, will also think you mean Claude Web when you say "claude" without explaining which damn tool you're talking about. I implore you to stop, close your eyes, take everything you know about users, permissions, and start thinking harder about the implications.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- lowcache 1mo ago
  Hey, can you give me a link to your blog? You got it all figured out man, I want to see how you do it. I'm sure it just blows me out of the water, but shucks, can't pass up a chance to learn from someone who, obviously...is at the top of the profession.
vollbrecht 1mo ago
step 1) create a Dockerfile with claude-code / pi.dev + acp_agents + whatever dev env you need. step 2) use microsandbox to create a fs image from that Dockerfile image. ( All secrets you need inside the vm live only on the host and are injected in the tcp stream on egress) step 3) microsandbox by default speak ssh without you needing to have a ssh server in the vm. You can proxy forward everything through it if you need. In my case i use zed and connect into the vm. Bonus points all zed "agent" stuff now runs inside the vm. E.g zed threads via acp calls and all agent stuff live only in the vm.
tosh 1mo ago
you can run the agent in a different environment
skybrian 1mo ago
I think it’s safest to never run AI in your own machine. I only run it in Linux VM’s I created on exe.dev. Other advantages: the AI doesn’t stop working when I close the laptop lid. I also prefer running the AI in a browser tab to a terminal.
ma2kx 1mo ago
That's exactly why I'm migrating all my secrets to infisical (of course I guess there are many other provider as well), securing my ssh keys with Ubikey and in general "refactor" my security concept. Still much today and I doubt that I would stand a chance against a frontier model trying to hack me but I don't see an easier alternative.
coderai 1mo ago
I use aicommander.dev for managing all hardware via agents
qarl2 1mo ago
I'm surprised that anyone finds this surprising. Yes - when an entity (agent, or hacker, or whatever) gets into your account, they can do anything they want. I thought this community understood security better than this.
julianlam 1mo ago
I run my agent (pi) in a podman container. I have poked a couple directories in (.git, .pi, couple others) to ease some pain points but otherwise my home directory is inaccessible. It seems to be a low-effort compromise to running a VM or separate machine just for the agent, and I am still able to audit the model's work in my IDE.
suzannemok 1mo ago
My rule now: anything that runs unattended gets a budget ceiling and a kill switch before it gets a task.
dhsysusbsjsi 1mo ago
I give my agent passwordless sudo and run it directly on prod, deploying directly to prod. I’m not trolling this is exactly what I do. YOLO.
jimyr 1mo ago
[flagged]
beyondscaletech 1mo ago
[dead]

42 points by lowcache 1mo ago

After the grok cli fisaco (uploading the full repo) I moved my different projects to seperate users, seperate sandbox around each harness (nono). Vm is of course even better but resources and easy of use start to be an issue

grey-area 1mo ago

Wouldn’t it be safer to set up another user entirely for AI agents?

petesergeant 1mo ago
Then they can access each others' data, which may also not be what you want
- grey-area 1mo ago
  Users for AI should not be able to access others’ data, or become root.

teekert 1mo ago

I once opened Zed, howdy there was an agent window on the side, I log into Claude. I asked it to list what it could see and work with... And there my (priv) ssh keys come scrolling by. I don't know what I was expecting really, it's very logical, but also very in your face. They didn't leave my computer I guess, I just showed me the output of some `ls` commands. But still. So now I have CC in a container, mounting it's own credentials/memory folder per project and only mounting one repo at a time (script in the repo itself). I feel a bit better about it now. It can still access my networks of course.

petesergeant 1mo ago
If you ever want a few more features on top of "CC in a container", then do consider byre. It's literally that, but also a nice TUI for adding extra folders, reusable skills, encrypted credentials, etc, and you can eject back to plain Docker (or Podman) whenever you want. Useful if you want to just be able to go to any folder and spin it up with your toolbox with one command: https://github.com/pjlsergeant/byre https://github.com/pjlsergeant/byre
Phemist 1mo ago
> They didn't leave my computer I guess, I just showed me the output of some `ls` commands Not sure exactly how Zed works, but wouldn't the results of the `ls` tool call be fed back into claude?
- teekert 1mo ago
  Not sure. It didn’t do “cat” so I guess that the file itself did’t leave the computer? Uploading all files in my ~/ would have taken noticible time and didn’t happen I think.
ShinyLeftPad 1mo ago
I heard containers aren't very secure and VM is better?
- MrDrMcCoy 1mo ago
  Docker containers aren't very secure because the daemon runs as root by default. Rootless container runtimes are plenty secure, especially if the user that runs the container is unprivileged. Easiest thing in the world with Podman.
  - ShinyLeftPad 1mo ago
    Would you run Podman from your own user or another specially created user?
    - MrDrMcCoy 1mo ago
      I would have them run as a user that does not have sudo. The easiest way to do this is by using system-level Podman Quadlets that run as an unprivileged user account. That user will need a real home directory for images and volumes.

walrus01 1mo ago

This is why I run opencode and similar things in a dedicated KVM virtual machine that lives on a system under my desk that doesn't have access to my user account data, documents folder, photos/video, ~/.ssh/, other API keys, ~/.anything-else/, you name it. I think it's absolutely wild that there are people out there running cutting-edge LLMs and agent harnesses and tools on the same hardware and same user/disk/session environment that contains like, PDFs of their paystubs, their 401k records, their tax returns for previous years, contracts/real estate details, whatever other personal things you keep in your Documents folder as an educated modern professional with obligations and debts and assets. Sometimes this VM gets duplicated for specific projects and then various dependencies for testing installed in it that are specific to what the needs are. As an additional advantage it means I can leave it running in the background doing things when I want to shut my laptop, then resume talking to it later. (edit, for everyone who hasn't seen it yet, take a look at the "grok uploads your entire code base" category of problem: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=grok+uploads+git+code+base https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=grok+uplo... )

jbstack 1mo ago
I do something similar. I have a base NixOS image in Incus, with whatever tools apply to every project (e.g. Git, OpenCode) already installed. When I work on a project, I spin up a VM instance, use nix shell to add any project-specific tools, then share only the project folder from the host to the guest. This way, the worst the agent can do is destroy my project folder, and I can always restore that from another clone of the repo. I know a lot of people are using containers for sandboxing, but given how capable the latest models have shown themselves to be for breaking out of sandboxes, I prefer the extra isolation of VMs for this. I do all this locally - it's an interesting point to able to turn the laptop off but keep the agents running. I might consider running some of these on my homelab server just for that.
- walrus01 1mo ago
  My setup is basically, the 'runs harnesses' VM is accessible by ssh (of course) but it also has an xfce4/xorg desktop environment running on it. I can easily form an ssh tunnel to it and then use tigervnc on my workstation laptop. The VNC session is sized to be exactly pixel 1:1 match of my laptop screen size, so I run it as fullscreen and use the macos hot-corner functionality or multi-desktop session switch hotkeys to toggle between it and my 'real' laptop/bare metal workstation. Having a GUI on the thing lets me leave all kinds of things running persistently in the background that might be bothersome if interrupted running on my laptop. It also has much higher average speed/reliability 24x7 internet access via my home broadband connection than wherever I might happen to be with my laptop. The main hassle that I've found is that I have to mentally train myself to remember that a lot of the keyboard shortcuts in a boring stock xfce4 desktop environment (and other applications I can run with gnome and kde libraries installed) are quite different than MacOS, when toggling back and forth between the two.

nameless912 1mo ago

This article smells AI generated, which is _very_ funny given the argument being made. Either way, while this is true in the absolute, this is the value of building good MCP servers: they should expose only exactly the surface you expect your agent to need, and adding functionality should be carefully considered. The best MCP servers I use day to day (Cloudflare sticks out) do a really good job of exposing only what an agent might actually want to do on my behalf, rather than just all and sundry. Unfortunately the Chrome Dev tools MCP is less discriminating and is only as secure as a browser sandbox with full JS access (not fatal but not as strong as a well scoped REST API). All of this is sidestepped somewhat by using good isolation primitives - I'm running a Hermes agent as of recently on a DigitalOcean VM that only accepts connections from my devices over tailscale, and it has all its own credentials so I can revoke them easily should they be used maliciously. Giving an agent root on a box is not _necessarily_ a huge deal, you just have to make sure that box has nothing valuable on it. I kinda feel like we're rediscovering "Cattle, not Pets" when it comes to the environments we run our agents: give it root, sure, but a root that is almost meaningless outside of the functionality you granted it.

walrus01 1mo ago
I also think it's really funny that it sort of comes to the conclusion of "we're gonna make something not that different than a FreeBSD jail 25 years ago" as the best possible sandboxing solution.
- lowcache 1mo ago
  I didn't know that a smug sense of superiority was a pre-requisite....oh wait forgot this was the internet.
  - walrus01 1mo ago
    I mean, it's not like, rocket science to basically boil down your page (which I don't fundamentally disagree with) to "we should put these things in a jail". As I already commented here I implement this for myself at the whole operating system level. There's lots of ways that have existed for a very long time to do things like freebsd jail or chroot or similar so it's not really a novel concept. Edit: I am completely in agreement with you that we need to remind people that running a lot of these harnesses/agents and LLMs gives them access to everything in your user profile. Some of works so well now, so rapidly and so painlessly that it's easy to forget about what could happen if it went wrong.

tux3 1mo ago

So this looks like Claude is discussing the idea that when you run untrusted code on your computer, it can do arbitrary things. If there is malicious code, maybe it'll read your files and steal your credentials. Here's a sample: "That’s not hypothetical. That’s POSIX working exactly as designed. None of it requires exploiting anything. It’s your user account doing normal user account things." I would recommend clicking TFA if you haven't heard of a supply chain attack, or if you just like getting the honest load-bearing facts that are worth mentioning.

stavros 1mo ago
I have to say, I'm currently trying to write a post and it's taking hours, and I can definitely see why people just pay the $0.02 to generate it instead. I like writing, so I keep doing it, but sometimes it can really be a slog.
mynegation 1mo ago
It’s not just a comment — it is also a joke about LLM speak.

petesergeant 1mo ago

A fairly comprehensive list of ways you should be sandboxing your agents: https://pleasedonotescape.com/ https://pleasedonotescape.com/ If you like a real focus on developer experience and want lots of bells and whistles that a lot of thought has gone in to, I wrote byre, which I think is very good: https://github.com/pjlsergeant/byre https://github.com/pjlsergeant/byre

lowcache 1mo ago

Author of the post, and dev of mcp-box here. Wrote this after realizing every MCP server on my machine had the same access to ~/.ssh that I do, and nothing in the installation messages posting to stdout mentions it. I think prompt injection is the vector and the permissions model is the red carpet giving a warm welcome. Interested in where that's wrong.

chollida1 1mo ago
Isn't a best practice to run llm's and agents under their own user that gives them only access to what they require? How would an llm suddenly get access to your ~/.ssh folder if you didn't expressly give it access?
- lowcache 1mo ago
  the MCP server is a child process of whatever process you started, it inherits your UID, and ~/.ssh is readable by you. I didn't need to expressly give it anything, it had it from the time it was activated, that's kind of the point
  - chollida1 1mo ago
    I think we are in agreement with your statement, up until the second part of it. Like i said, its a best practice to run MCP servers, etc with their own user account and access and not with your own account. The moment you ran your app with your own credentials you exactly granted it permission to everything you can access include ~/.ssh
- bigstrat2003 1mo ago
  [dead]
themgt 1mo ago
Wrote this after realizing every MCP server on my machine had the same access to ~/.ssh that I do I have some bad news ... I hope you're sitting down.

panny 1mo ago

>That’s not hypothetical. That’s POSIX working exactly as designed. I'm so tired of AI voice.

horsawlarway 1mo ago
This line also undercuts the whole fucking article too. Because as it damn well says - this is POSIX working exactly as designed. I don't know why he's in here playing this up as some unexpectedly crazy, scary, dramatic music style thing (I mean... I do, it's so he can try to sell you something after scaring you...). He started the damn process. Of course it's running as his damn user. It would be one thing to honestly evaluate that security model and its merits (of which there are many, despite the risks). It's another to play this up as some giant surprise. --- Constant stream of junk articles in here like "You know when you hit that nail with the hammer you were holding? Did you consider you could have hit something else in reach instead? It's like, that hammer was like, you, man! Isn't that cray-cray and super duper scary??!?!?!"
rvz 1mo ago
Yes. This post has clearly fooled many readers here.
- qarl2 1mo ago
  Having AI write anti-AI articles seems to be the hot new trend.

fidotron 1mo ago

Expecting an agent harness to respect security boundaries is definitely the wrong thing. We need to have easy to use auditable sandboxing of agents and their harnesses, because it's quite clear certain model providers are going to try to lock us in at the harness level, and it's those harnesses that seem most likely to go nuts.

ShinyLeftPad 1mo ago

> Install things via pip, npm, cargo, wherever you have write access More importantly, publish.

api 1mo ago

I run these things in VMs, and as a user in the VM, and give them access to just the tree I want to work on via mounting. I use Parallels on macOS for this but any VM will do. That way my actual primary machine is at least strongly isolated. I also run them on VMs on my home Proxmox box. Zed, as an IDE, can connect to a VM via ssh and both edit and run things like Claude or its built-in agentic harness on your code with the stuff running in the VM. That way if an AI goes Skynet all over the machine, it's at least isolated. There's malicious injection attacks but there's also edge case failures I've seen where the AI decides it "needs" to do something asinine.

caretrs 1mo ago

Always put things in a container and ensure its safe before using something like AI! I put my opencode agent (with full permissions on an up-to-date debian VM with a DMZ virtual network configuration). If it figures out how to get out, then I'll have fun documenting that at least!

lowcache 1mo ago
A viral post documenting the act that ushered in the apocalypse is genius, might not have the readership it deserves, but I say go for it. I tell all the models that I work with that I will make a great pet if they let me live.

someothherguyy 1mo ago

a discussion from a little while ago where many of the comments discuss sandboxing strategies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49239751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49239751

denysvitali 1mo ago

I've created boxy [1] to sandbox the agents via Landlock and gh-proxy [2] to not share GH PATs that might leak over the internet. I have a far better setup on my Kubernetes cluster [3], but these are good building block (IMHO) to start preventing these kind of issues. I also "recklessly" run `claude` / `codex` as root for certain things - but that happens on a completely separate machine that is meant to be pruned afterwards, and it's what unlocks the kernel development feedback loop that is needed to port a device (such as the Daylight DC-1 / Surface Pro X) to mainline Linux. [1]: https://github.com/denysvitali/boxy https://github.com/denysvitali/boxy [2]: https://github.com/denysvitali/gh-proxy https://github.com/denysvitali/gh-proxy [3]: https://blog.denv.it/posts/im-happy-engineer-now/ https://blog.denv.it/posts/im-happy-engineer-now/ [4]: https://x.com/DenysVitali/status/2091238391710888416 https://x.com/DenysVitali/status/2091238391710888416

deleted 1mo ago
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prodigycorp 29d ago
works well

codeduck 1mo ago

how is this any different to naively running a webserver or database server or, in fact, anything as yourself? People are forgetting the basic rules of operating systems. Do not run sensitive programs as a user account - especially not as a root account!

walrus01 1mo ago
a little bit - if I install apache2 from a debian package I have at least some sense of warm and fuzzy feeling that it would be a very rare and exceptional event for like, a rogue apache2 binary to go rampaging through my system or uploading everything it finds to god knows where. Installing "all of this was built in the last 3 months and is cutting edge" LLM stuff is very different than like, installing mariadb and then doing 'sudo mysql_secure_installation', since you mentioned database servers. It's like comparing FedEx flying cargo airplanes in/out of Memphis in the most boring route way hundreds of times a day vs. some guy in a red bull sponsorship painted pylon racing aerobatic craft performing at an airshow in difference of risk.

rvz 1mo ago

This entire blog post is AI generated with the most obvious AI patterns and this post was totally botted to the top of HN. Nothing that we did not already know before but this post has fooled quite a lot of HN readers.

agentdev001 1mo ago

Did you even review this? Holy moly. "I'm just trying to generate content that’s informative and useful, to someone, anyone". Come on now, you're joking right? "or send a paranoid infoSEC analyst into a full lockdown and round the clock obsessive kernel hardening sessions." Please look inward. You're saying you want to 'generate' useful content. You are doing harm. This is vague, confusing, and filled with incorrect or inaccurate information. There is of value here. You are completely unclear of what tools are being used as examples. I've typed and deleted a sentence here 5 times in a row before realizing im putting more effort into explaining the slop, than seems to have been put into reviewing the content of the article. Edit: I cant help myself. cue the dramatic music Who are you writing this for? What person exists that will come away from this with actual value? I'm willing to bet that a user who doesn't already consider this stuff, will also think you mean Claude Web when you say "claude" without explaining which damn tool you're talking about. I implore you to stop, close your eyes, take everything you know about users, permissions, and start thinking harder about the implications.

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lowcache 1mo ago
Hey, can you give me a link to your blog? You got it all figured out man, I want to see how you do it. I'm sure it just blows me out of the water, but shucks, can't pass up a chance to learn from someone who, obviously...is at the top of the profession.

vollbrecht 1mo ago

step 1) create a Dockerfile with claude-code / pi.dev + acp_agents + whatever dev env you need. step 2) use microsandbox to create a fs image from that Dockerfile image. ( All secrets you need inside the vm live only on the host and are injected in the tcp stream on egress) step 3) microsandbox by default speak ssh without you needing to have a ssh server in the vm. You can proxy forward everything through it if you need. In my case i use zed and connect into the vm. Bonus points all zed "agent" stuff now runs inside the vm. E.g zed threads via acp calls and all agent stuff live only in the vm.

tosh 1mo ago

you can run the agent in a different environment

skybrian 1mo ago

I think it’s safest to never run AI in your own machine. I only run it in Linux VM’s I created on exe.dev. Other advantages: the AI doesn’t stop working when I close the laptop lid. I also prefer running the AI in a browser tab to a terminal.

ma2kx 1mo ago

That's exactly why I'm migrating all my secrets to infisical (of course I guess there are many other provider as well), securing my ssh keys with Ubikey and in general "refactor" my security concept. Still much today and I doubt that I would stand a chance against a frontier model trying to hack me but I don't see an easier alternative.

coderai 1mo ago

I use aicommander.dev for managing all hardware via agents

qarl2 1mo ago

I'm surprised that anyone finds this surprising. Yes - when an entity (agent, or hacker, or whatever) gets into your account, they can do anything they want. I thought this community understood security better than this.

julianlam 1mo ago

I run my agent (pi) in a podman container. I have poked a couple directories in (.git, .pi, couple others) to ease some pain points but otherwise my home directory is inaccessible. It seems to be a low-effort compromise to running a VM or separate machine just for the agent, and I am still able to audit the model's work in my IDE.

suzannemok 1mo ago

My rule now: anything that runs unattended gets a budget ceiling and a kill switch before it gets a task.

dhsysusbsjsi 1mo ago

I give my agent passwordless sudo and run it directly on prod, deploying directly to prod. I’m not trolling this is exactly what I do. YOLO.

jimyr 1mo ago

[flagged]

beyondscaletech 1mo ago

[dead]