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Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop

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Re: Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop

#51

Post by vqtska »

killerstorm wrote: post #39
vqtska wrote: post #15

I still don't understand the point of all these VMs and containers for agents. Just create a separate user on your machine without sudo privileges, switch to it in your terminal and run all the agents you want without it being able to reach your files. What am I missing?

Privilege escalation (e.g. setuid), world-readable files might contain sensitive data, world-writeable files, unrestricted network access (including access to all locally running services)... If you have fully patched system without zero-days and it's configured in a perfect way, then, sure... Container is quite like a "separate user" except you can explicitly define what it can access. (Even if all your daemons have…

Sure, if you assume the agent will be hostile on you. I thought it's just so the agent doesn't accidentally rm -rf / on you

Re: Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop

#52

Post by nullc »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #8
bitwize wrote: post #6

Errbody gangsta until the agent figures out it's in a container and finds an exploit that lets it break out of container jail...

I developed a VM project just like this one. Asked Fable to stress test it and try to break out of containment, and to my surprise it didn't manage to. Fable didn't get downgraded to Opus either, for some reason. Would have thrown Mythos at it if I had access to it.

You should conduct the same test with knowingly faulty containment, otherwise the theory that the model is hobbled should probably outrank that it couldn't escape.

Re: Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop

#54

Post by mrbn100ful »

dietdrb wrote: post #32

We are building the cloud version of this: hosted, isolated VMs. MacOS and Linux supported. Cloud means you can run many VMs in parallel. https://bitrise.io/platform/remote-dev-environments

It's called https://github.com/features/codespaces or https://codeanywhere.com/ or https://claude.ai/code/

Re: Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop

#55

Post by de6u99er »

vqtska wrote: post #15

I still don't understand the point of all these VMs and containers for agents. Just create a separate user on your machine without sudo privileges, switch to it in your terminal and run all the agents you want without it being able to reach your files. What am I missing?

On my Mac, every sudo requires either my fingerprint or password, and times out immediately.

Re: Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop

#56

Post by pigeons »

vqtska wrote: post #51
killerstorm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privilege escalation (e.g. setuid), world-readable files might contain sensitive data, world-writeable files, unrestricted network access (including access to all locally running services)... If you have fully patched system without zero-days and it's configured in a perfect way, then, sure... Container is quite like a "separate user" except you can explicitly define what it can access. (Even if all your daemons have…

Sure, if you assume the agent will be hostile on you. I thought it's just so the agent doesn't accidentally rm -rf / on you

They do try privilege escalation unprompted.

Re: Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop

#57

Post by augusto-moura »

vqtska wrote: post #15

I still don't understand the point of all these VMs and containers for agents. Just create a separate user on your machine without sudo privileges, switch to it in your terminal and run all the agents you want without it being able to reach your files. What am I missing?

Mainly networking and namespaces, same reasons why we run services on docker instead of old multi-user setups

Re: Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop

#58

Post by killerstorm »

vqtska wrote: post #51
killerstorm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privilege escalation (e.g. setuid), world-readable files might contain sensitive data, world-writeable files, unrestricted network access (including access to all locally running services)... If you have fully patched system without zero-days and it's configured in a perfect way, then, sure... Container is quite like a "separate user" except you can explicitly define what it can access. (Even if all your daemons have…

Sure, if you assume the agent will be hostile on you. I thought it's just so the agent doesn't accidentally rm -rf / on you

The agent might install hostile software, e.g. a npm package. Unfortunately, very common problem nowadays.

Re: Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop

#60

Post by zzril »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #29
vqtska wrote: post #15

I still don't understand the point of all these VMs and containers for agents. Just create a separate user on your machine without sudo privileges, switch to it in your terminal and run all the agents you want without it being able to reach your files. What am I missing?

You're missing the fact you'd be sharing a kernel with the sandboxed agent. Virtualization presents an infinitely smaller attack surface.

If your threat model is that of a malicious agent that will use a 0-day LPE to get root and exfiltrate all of your SSH keys, virtualization makes sense. But then, I wouldn't run such an agent at all, if not specifically in the context of malware analysis.

If you're just concerned about "agent messing up and taking the rules in some markdown files more laxly than I would have", then running it as a seperate user is totally enough...

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