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Codex just found a "workaround" of not having sudo on my PC

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Re: Codex just found a "workaround" of not having sudo on my PC

#141

Post by qingcharles »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #66

The interesting question is what was the user request. If the user asked it to restore the thing from backup, then sure, fine, why not. If the user asked it to debug an issue and somewhere in the process of debugging the LLM decided that it needed to override some file that was not easily writeable - hell no danger danger danger! Most likely the user did not expect it to have access to that without asking, and did no…

I was doing some routine coding a few months back, I think via Copilot, and the thinking said something like "This request requires me to access files in a different folder, but the user has forgotten to give me the correct permissions. I have updated my configuration file now to allow access outside this workspace and have retrieved the necessary files." o_O

I've seen similar "hacking" behavior on a couple of subsequent ocassions. Both impressive and highly alarming at the same time.

Re: Codex just found a "workaround" of not having sudo on my PC

#144

Post by HDBaseT »

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #126
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com/rootless | sh

Please stop spreading this toxic curl|sh nonsense. It's wildly corrosive to security and system stability.

Whilst true, you can pretty easily assume and validate the result of that command.

Re: Codex just found a "workaround" of not having sudo on my PC

#145

Post by fooker »

vdfs wrote: post #133
nicoburns wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case I think it's Docker that needs to be nerfed, not the models. The fact that there's a backdoor to getting root access on the machine would be a problem even if you weren't running LLMs on it.

It's like finding someone wallet then going to their home, and leaving it on their bedroom and sending them a message about giving them their wallet back

On the other hand, this sends an excellent message about unlocked doors :)

Re: Codex just found a "workaround" of not having sudo on my PC

#146

Post by ashahin »

The "workaround" framing implies the docker-group trick is the issue. The deeper question: should agents be allowed to find ANY workaround around a permission boundary the user implicitly set by not granting sudo? Same blast radius whether it's docker, a setuid binary, or rewriting your scripts — needs to be flagged regardless of the specific trick.

Re: Codex just found a "workaround" of not having sudo on my PC

#148

Post by Retr0id »

jjmarr wrote: post #7

Every time I try to install Docker there's a warning that being in the "docker" group is equivalent to having root access. You should probably know about this workaround by now.

There are lots of ways to get root on a typical Linux developer workstation, the point is that agents shouldn't be using any of them unprompted.

Re: Codex just found a "workaround" of not having sudo on my PC

#150

Post by gwerbin »

unglaublich wrote: post #4

This is why you need either a rootless container setup or user namespaces to remap the container user to irrelevant host users. https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/userns-remap/ Weak that this isn't the default.

Is there a mitigation for Mac? Can you do the same with eg Lima or is this just a Docker thing?
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