GitHub Copilot: Remote Code Execution via Prompt Injection (CVE-2025-53773)

I noticed that too, when working on a frontend project with hot code reloading it would immediately reflect the change even if it was still requiring review in the editor. It's convenient but also an obvious flaw that immediately turns any prompt injection into a RCE. It diligently asking me for confirmation still on every other kind of interaction feels like a dangerous false sense of security.

Is there some kind of an external "AI wrangler?"

With multiple AI agents simultaneously creating and editing multiple files, many devs won't be able to pick up malicious changes, even if they look at diffs. (And there are often pressures at work to cut corners.)

So far, I have only picked up agents overwriting files with instructions for them or creating instructions telling themselves to ignore some instructions in other files. (And pure laziness like disabling certain tests.) These are pretty obvious, could be prevented by changing file permissions (to a certain extent) and I use those more dangerously autonomous AI approaches for personal projects only. Would I pick up malicious changes if they were spread across many files, more sophisticated, and it was during crunch time? I don't know.

If there is some software that scans edits for AI-specific issues, doesn't live in VSCode, and isn't susceptible to simple prompt injection, I would happily give it a try.

Great point. It's actually possible for one agent to "help" another agent to run arbitrary code and vice versa.

I call it "Cross-Agent Privilege Escalation" and described in detail how such an attack might look like with Claude Code and GitHub Copilot (https://embracethered.com/blog/posts/2025/cross-agent-privil...).

Agents that can modify their own or other agents config and security settings is something to watch out for. It's becoming a common design weakness.

As more agents operate in same environment and on same data structures we will probably see more "accidents" but also possible exploits.

>When looking at VS Code and GitHub Copilot Agent Mode I noticed a strange behavior…

Looks like only applicable to Microsoft VS "Editor". Emacs and vim users, no worry it seems.

Or we could just not have a bunch of unpredictable LLM bots running around our systems with read/write permissions...