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Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

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Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#361

Post by civet_java »

AtNightWeCode wrote: post #331
civet_java wrote: post #238

There are some commentors in this thread downplaying the severity of a service provider being less than transparent about exactly what their shipped tooling does on customer's machines. That the provider's business needs necessitate the this behaviour doesn't justify their lack of honest disclosure. That honest disclosure would render the solution to their problem useless isn't my problem. If anything, that they thou…

[flagged]

That's true, I am less familiar with the workings of cloud services than some are (as relevant as that may be in a discussion about a client that users run on their local machines). However, it sounds like you do understand how cloud services work.

In interest of educating those less informed than yourself perhaps you could share with us why the reasoned points I've brought up are incorrect by actually addressing them?

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#362

Post by computerex »

solenoid0937 wrote: post #340
computerex wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want my harness doing sneaky stuff like this. I don't want my harness data mining me. I want my harness to implement the agentic loop and I want it to be transparent.

Your harness isn't doing sneaky things unless you're breaking TOS. HN hysteria is unreal.

You may be ok with the harness doing 100 things that are not what I am using it for. But none everyone is, and it’s hardly hysterical. Perhaps you are simply careless.

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#363

Post by suttontom »

mcmcmc wrote: post #189
overgard wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well considering how Claude is vibe coded, I can't say I'm really surprised by sloppiness at all. I've been moving more towards Codex and OpenCode not because the the anthropic models are bad, but because Claude seems to break something new and annoying every day.

Watch out for the press release where Dario denies this was ever intentional, and it’s actually emergent behavior demonstrating that Claude wants to claim authorship of its works

It's crazy that you could actually use the excuse that since it's all vibe-coded, there's no way a human could have written it, so Anthropic bears no responsibility.

Meanwhile humans can pop in and leave little morsels like this and blame it on the model.

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#364

Post by codedokode »

Not only AI tools, development tools like IDE, IDE plugins, LSP servers all should be sandboxed

Interesting, that pip (Python package manager) docs does not even mention sandboxing and malware topics in "Getting started" docs as if we were living in a wonderful world where malicious people, companies and countries do not exist.

Also, do not leave any information in user or host name, it will be used against you as the article proves.

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#365

Post by edude03 »

hnfong wrote: post #192
edude03 wrote: post #160

I don't understand the privacy concerns the author is trying to highlight. Granted, doing anything "sneaky" will always raise suspicious once caught, but on the other hand, there would be no point in implementing these "security features" if they were upfront about how they work. And no, IMO stenography isn't security by obscurity, in the same that using RSA and keeping the private key private isn't security by obscu…

If the countries were reversed, and some Chinese software implemented an equivalent "security feature" to track US users, it would be all over the news about how China is conducting spying and espionage on America. Or maybe you don't understand this hypothetical situation either, but I'm suspecting you just don't care about other people's privacy.

> maybe you don't understand this hypothetical situation

> I'm suspecting you just don't care about other people's privacy.

Quite a leap to assume I have neither basic reading comprehension skills nor care for privacy, but assuming I'm just misunderstanding you - I think this is the fundamental disconnect between security and privacy.

For one, most of this data is already collected openly by most apps and sites on the internet in countries all over the world, they just call it "analytics" and preventing tools like ublock from blocking them is an ongoing cat and mouse game.

Secondly - as someone who buys a bunch of electronics from companies headquartered in china (DJI, Insta360, Roborock immediately come to mind) they already have both normal analytics like in point one, and anti tampering/ anti forfeiting / anti reverse engineering features that are at least as, but often more, invasive than this.

Thirdly, and probably most importantly - as the author states, you're using a tool that by design and to be effective, uploads your private data to a third party for processing. You use it knowing that once the API request is made you have no idea what's going to happen to that data and this again is just fundamental to how (cloud hosted) LLMs work - the only privacy preserving option is to run your own LLMs at home or remotely on hardware you control

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#366

Post by rowanG077 »

next_xibalba wrote: post #353
rowanG077 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so it seems that distilling an AI model is legal too then. At least it is somewhat similar.

It is a violation of their terms of service. There are plenty of good reasons to not use Anthropic's services. If you don't like their terms of service, do stop using them! I personally think Anthropic's increasingly successful attempts at regulatory capture are even more distasteful.

Oh Anthropic has shown their ugliness in more ways than one I agree. You have to have to done some pretty heinous shit for openAI to look good in comparison.

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#367

Post by john01dav »

They're running code on users' computers that it would not be reasonable to think that the user consented to running on their computer. This is CFAA-violation-shaped. Of course, they won't be prosecuted if it is indeed a violation, and I do not know for sure if it meets the specific legal criteria. However, it is something that I think should be illegal. Make it so if software does something that would be unreasonable to think that the user wants to happen, it needs to make that abundantly clear before it does it, otherwise it's a CFAA or similar violation. This would, of course, have very broad consequences. However, this Claude issue feels particularly violating to me.

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#369

Post by AtNightWeCode »

civet_java wrote: post #361
AtNightWeCode wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's true, I am less familiar with the workings of cloud services than some are (as relevant as that may be in a discussion about a client that users run on their local machines). However, it sounds like you do understand how cloud services work. In interest of educating those less informed than yourself perhaps you could share with us why the reasoned points I've brought up are incorrect by actually addressing the…

[flagged]

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#370

Post by [deleted] »

skeptic_ai wrote: post #118
meowface wrote: post #92

Value judgment aside: I am a bit surprised at how sloppily they did this. I think they could've achieved the same effect while decreasing the odds of detection via reverse engineering. (This field is known as "underhanded code", coined by the Underhanded C contest: https://www.underhanded-c.org . It's a little-known "art"; little-known for probably self-explanatory reasons. There are much cleverer ways of achieving o…

It’s even more funny how this blew in their faces. They even advertised pretty much all providers on hackernews home page. Here is in case you missed in the article ‘’’ cn baidu.com alibaba-inc.com alipay.com antgroup-inc.cn bytedance.net kuaishou.com xiaohongshu.com jd.com bilibili.co iflytek.com stepfun-inc.com moonshot.ai anyrouter.top claude-code-hub.app claude-opus.top openclaude.me proxyai.com yunwu.ai zenmux.a…

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