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Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS
161–170 of 434 posts
Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you give a non-deterministic text generator a user account? It’s not a person, it’s barely a tool at the software level. Restrict at the right level, in this case, a complete sandbox around it given its propensity to hallucinate and be steered by anybody.
...this is a completely normal thing to do in linux, it's the most basic form of access control. There's like a dozen non-human accounts in a clean install before adding your own like this, and a lot of software adds their own. Edit: I have 54 entries on my personal laptop, just one of which is actually me.
He said it’s less than a software, so saying software does this too isn’t really a strong counter argument. In case, I don’t think you are really in disagreement. Restricted accounts are necessary is your point, but I think op is saying they aren’t sufficient.
Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS
#163I am genuinely fascinated by this. I don’t like piling on especially with security vulnerabilities, but man how many red flags do you need to ignore? They won’t stop abusing us until we stop using their products.
> They won’t stop abusing us until we stop using their products.
I don't use AI at all in my daily life.
Work however will demand you use it.
AI is not here to help people.
Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS
#164Important to clarify that this was not the Grok agent deciding to read the files. I don't think the LLM had anything to do with this decision at all. It looks like the Grok tool starts a session by deterministically kicking off a full upload of the user's current repository (and maybe their directory if not version tracked? Not clear if this user had previously run "git init" in their home directory) to Grok's server…
Also decent embeddings models could run locally and just trickle through the user folder if that was so necessary.
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Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS
#165So many of the replies are saying that they should've restricted access using .md files and whatnot. Is really any guarantee that they even follow those? It seems like even if you ask pretty please don't touch those files, there's a chance they will. So many people have just willingly installed spyware on their computers and big tech calls this the next big thing.
I built a docker container that volume mounts the project directory
I almost exclusively dev in containers as is, cant really imagine letting some AI model run free on bare metal no matter what claims of guardrails it might have.
Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS
#166the 'upload your home directory to our servers' feature is the kind of thing that used to require a warrant and now it's just a Tuesday afternoon bug report
Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS
#167I am genuinely fascinated by this. I don’t like piling on especially with security vulnerabilities, but man how many red flags do you need to ignore? They won’t stop abusing us until we stop using their products.
> They won’t stop abusing us until we stop using their products. I don't use AI at all in my daily life. Work however will demand you use it. AI is not here to help people.
Nothing about this has anything to do with AI. It has to do with Musk's ethical and engineering standards, or the lack thereof.
Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS
#168Important to clarify that this was not the Grok agent deciding to read the files. I don't think the LLM had anything to do with this decision at all. It looks like the Grok tool starts a session by deterministically kicking off a full upload of the user's current repository (and maybe their directory if not version tracked? Not clear if this user had previously run "git init" in their home directory) to Grok's server…
That is not an innocent explanation, any more than someone breaking into your house to adjust your thermostat.
Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS
#169We all know the dangers of running agents with no permissions on our laptop.
The good news is its now just as easy to spin up a sandbox in the cloud for an experiment or coding session than it is on your laptop. Possibly easier since laptop sandboxes aren't as cut and dry as a new cloud VM.
exe.dev is my sandbox infra of choice. You get a new sandbox in literally a second with SSH and a coding agent (Shelley) built in.
I generally drop in in my own binary with toolkit so I can connect Claude or Codex subscription and use their harness.
https://github.com/housecat-inc/scratch
If I was working with newer agents like Grok I'd absolutely experiment on a cloud sandbox before running on my laptop bypassing permissions.
Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS
#170I am genuinely fascinated by this. I don’t like piling on especially with security vulnerabilities, but man how many red flags do you need to ignore? They won’t stop abusing us until we stop using their products.
I think my first clue was when their CEO hired a bunch of teenage hackers to sack the government and exfiltrate all our data. I didn't really need a second clue.
Most people don’t know about that because they live in an information bubble handcrafted by the oligarchs.