I'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.
ashishb 22 minutes ago [-]
I have been targeted with this attack in the wild where '.vscode/tasks.json' had the auto-run code.
I smelled something fishy and never ran it though.
VS 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.
acdha 36 minutes ago [-]
I 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.
ceejayoz 40 minutes ago [-]
You know they're just gonna click yes, right?
That prompt is just there so they can say "your fault!"
ktm5j 2 minutes ago [-]
Well, in that case it totally is their fault...
MeetingsBrowser 2 hours ago [-]
Only juniors are suing VSCode? What are others using?
stronglikedan 1 hours ago [-]
prob Cursor (also affected). at least that's preferred in my org
vikramkr 2 hours ago [-]
Point them at for what?
embedding-shape 5 hours ago [-]
Is 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 4 hours ago [-]
You might as well click yes, since it's all been uploaded as telemetry anyways.
IcyWindows 3 hours ago [-]
Citation needed
giancarlostoro 2 hours ago [-]
Hell 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.
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.
hulitu 2 hours 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.
bpt3 3 hours ago [-]
It'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 2 hours ago [-]
It'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 2 hours 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 1 hours 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.
zer00eyz 27 minutes ago [-]
> No one cares about security.
Not true, the C suite cares a LOT about security.
You need that human shield, that person to blame when it does go wrong...
continueops_com 18 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
4 hours ago [-]
sieabahlpark 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 17:38:04 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I smelled something fishy and never ran it though.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48127469
That prompt is just there so they can say "your fault!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not true, the C suite cares a LOT about security.
You need that human shield, that person to blame when it does go wrong...