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Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS

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Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS

#171

Post by drannex »

mixedbit wrote: post #123
nicce wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you doing something more advanced with Podman than just mounting the files? How is the access for relevant files given? How is the authentication shared across multiple uses? Just curious to streamline the process.

I work on a sandbox which has similar isolation level to Podman (rootless Linux user namespaces), but with UX optimized for local development work. Take a look: https://github.com/wrr/drop Basically, you don't enter a separate container in which you install a new distro, but you run on top of your current distro. You have environment specific home dirs which isolate your original home, but can have some files, such a…

This is wonderful - might even be exactly what one of my projects needs to use as a dependency.

In the README it mentions that it puts the dev environment in a filesystem jail, but how are you able to use your hosts bins without leaking access to the rest of the system? Or is that just an assumed liability?

Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS

#172

Post by TacticalCoder »

da_chicken wrote: post #43
LetsGetTechnicl wrote: post #13

So 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.

Yeah, I absolutely understand the allure of agentic AI, but I am absolutely not going to give shell access or data access to any agent. Certainly not with my permissions level. Until we can get something set up that gives strict schema-only access I'm going to copy and paste definitions for context. Yes that sucks, but it's my responsibility to protect the system just as much as it is to develop scripts and queries f…

> ... I am absolutely not going to give shell access or data access to any agent. Certainly not with my permissions level.

Of course not.

To me it's on a server, in a VM. And they're not seeing the real data/databases from the actual projects: they're seeing fake infos used only while in the dev environment. There's no way I'm dumping, even for tests, the real or part of the real DB somewhere an AI can see it.

To find bugs (for example), AIs are useful but honestly for code generated by LLMs, I'm thinking about going back to the early copy/paste from the ChatGPT days: because I see so many horrors in the code output by the latest SOTA LLMs that every single line of code they spew has to be checked by someone who does know better.

It's not just an issue of protecting confidential data / preventing spying: we're all discovering that we've got serious sloppy-pasta code problems now.

Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS

#173

Post by InsideOutSanta »

cpburns2009 wrote: post #150
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd expect it to be smart about what it actually needs to put in its context. I doubt it needs .env files, for example.

Wouldn't .env need to be read to know what vars are available?

.env files define what's stored in a var, not what vars are used by the rest of the code.

Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS

#175

Post by elmer2 »

This is why it's going to be a long time before companies will trust AI to scan their networks or apps for security vulnerabilities.

Our company audited a few AI-based pentesting companies and requested logs. In more than one case, it was sending drop tables for sql query injection checking and other destructive operations.

Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS

#176

Post by dcow »

Izkata wrote: post #144
khalic wrote: post #128

Earlier 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.

Even though it’s completely normal to us and in widespread use, GP is a reminder that conceptually it’s a broken model. Security should be capability-based not user-based. And to anyone who didn’t grow up on a desktop this model makes complete sense since it’s what your phone uses.

Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS

#177

Post by embedding-shape »

nzoschke wrote: post #169

We 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 i…

Or if you're on Linux or macOS, learn how Unix permissions work and can be used for, create a new restricted user locally, use that. No need to go all remote with all its drawbacks just to limit a little local process on your computer.

Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS

#178

Post by 12345ieee »

khalic wrote: post #128
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why the AI world does this. We don't need new security. We have security at home. It starts with sudo -u restricteduser myagent Your OS knows how to restrict access to things, you don't have to trust a pinkey promise from a vendor.

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.

Unix users are THE tool to restrict tool permissions, at any given time there's 20+ services on a Unix machine that run in their user.

Re: Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS

#179

Post by fwlr »

cush wrote: post #90
vorticalbox wrote: post #8

why do people give these LLMs full access to everything and then complain when it does somethign stupid? that is what sandboxes are for.

If your immediate reaction to a new piece of software siphoning up someone’s entire system full of highly personal data is, “you’re holding it wrong”, it might help to take a beat and remember that software was developed by a multi-trillion dollar company’s entire business model revolves around siphoning up as much highly personal data as possible

Well said. I hope one day it becomes possible for users who choose to install and run said software to also be able to remember this.
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