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Fed up with vibe coders, dev sneaks data-nuking prompt injection into their code (arstechnica.com)
submitted 3 months ago by [M, B] to c/hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
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[+] -25 points 3 months ago (7 children)

Yeah, I don't care what their reasons are, they added malware to their own project to fuck over a portion of their user base. That's not okay.

Let's analogise: an artist discovers their art has been printed out and hung on the wall in the home of someone they don't like. Does that artist have the right to try and burn down that person's house in retribution?

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  • [–] 24 points 3 months ago*

    Release Notes

    Warning: Do not use this release with an „AI“ Coding Agent of any form. The tool‘s output may confuse the agent and make it do unwanted things. See the paragraph in the user guide for details.

    It's like lighting a cigarette in a petrol station and being annoyed that they didn't make it fire risk proof.

    Also, what kind of security is applied nowadays that text can become an executable and no one bothered to put safeguards in place. This is like 90s internet, raw dogging data, no firewall, no encryption just pure unaltered and blind faith that it's all dandy.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Simple English is not malware. They didn't do their due diligence either.

    No code was executed. Failure to sandbox the AI agent you use is not the problem of the person who is providing free code databases to the internet at large.

    When it was the guy doing this on LinkedIn and forcing AI agents that interacted with his profile to speak to him in old English and address him as "my lord" was that malware?

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    It's malware as much as a zip bomb is malware. Both serve as input to another program to make it do a specific thing. That thing causes harm on the end user's device. Asking an agent to speak in old English causes no such harm.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Malware (a portmanteau of malicious software) is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, deprive access to information, or interfere with the user's computer security and privacy without their knowledge.

    Calling this malware is like calling a DDOS attack hacking.

    People have been warned about the fact that there is the potential for an AI LLM to take direction from text without the user's knowledge since this tech hit the mainstream. Additionally, it's also not malware when Alexa responds to its name while you're watching a YouTube video.

    These people infected their own computers with software that could be externally controlled on purpose. The LLM might be considered malware since it's working as designed, but the plain English isn't.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Yes, I acknowledge that it isn't malicious software. That's why I compare it to a zip bomb. The important part isn't "software". It's the "malicious". None of what Obelisk said relies on this thing being software.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    They called it "malware" when this already has a name and it's "prompt injection".

    We've been telling everyone for years not to download and run code you don't understand.

    We've been telling people since the advent of the AI LLM that prompt injection is a thing and people who use AI LLM's should protect against this.

    These AI companies are constantly stealing things from FOSS projects as well as artists and other devs/creators.

    Nobody sees a problem with that when it's poisoning LLM's themselves to protect artwork. But now that some idiot who doesn't check code before they execute it etc is crying about it and it's a big deal. I don't see much of a difference here.

    If you want the FOSS community to be there for you, don't go out of your way to use the corporate BS that's actively destroying it.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network

    Actively and deliberately adding text with the explicit purpose of attempting to delete other peoples' work fits this quite nicely, thank you for including it to illustrate my point.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    you might want to hear about this guy... banksy and this picture that was auctioned off only to be shredded as the auction was over....and maybe stew on that story for a minute...

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