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.
Only juniors are suing VSCode? What are others using?
Config Files That Run Code: Supply Chain Security Blindspot
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: Config Files That Run Code: Supply Chain Security Blindspot
#12It'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.
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…
>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.
Re: Config Files That Run Code: Supply Chain Security Blindspot
#13I'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.
Point them at for what?
Re: Config Files That Run Code: Supply Chain Security Blindspot
#14> 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.
Re: Config Files That Run Code: Supply Chain Security Blindspot
#15I'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.
Only juniors are suing VSCode? What are others using?
prob Cursor (also affected). at least that's preferred in my org
Re: Config Files That Run Code: Supply Chain Security Blindspot
#16It'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.
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 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.
Re: Config Files That Run Code: Supply Chain Security Blindspot
#17I'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.
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.
Re: Config Files That Run Code: Supply Chain Security Blindspot
#18I'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.
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.
You know they're just gonna click yes, right?
That prompt is just there so they can say "your fault!"
Re: Config Files That Run Code: Supply Chain Security Blindspot
#19I'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.
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.
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.
Re: Config Files That Run Code: Supply Chain Security Blindspot
#20It'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.
> 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...