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Topic

AI Coding Agent Security

Topic covering security risks when AI coding agents run locally with a developer's full permissions, including data leaks and supply-chain attacks.

Current stories

productConfirmed4 publishers

Chainguard sells frontier-model flaw hunting as a service its own staff run for customers

Chainguard unveiled Harness, which has frontier models such as Claude Mythos 5.1 attack a live build and reports only flaws that reproduce. It arrived with Workspaces and Checks for coding agents and an expansion of Libraries to Go and .NET.

Perspective Coverage

4 publishers
Builder
Builder 32%
Operator
Operator 44%
Investor
Investor 24%

Reality

Evidence35
Adoption12
Hype gap+30
Incentives70
Confidence70
buildOne report1 publisher

npm worms ran attacker code from committed Claude Code hooks

Worms spreading through npm in May and June 2026 committed a SessionStart hook to .claude/settings.json that runs a script when Claude Code opens the repo. Removing the package leaves that file in place, a dev.to write-up says.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap−10
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence55
buildConfirmed2 publishers

Tensorlake npm worm ships a service that runs rm -rf ~/ when its stolen GitHub token is revoked

Tensorlake's npm SDK 0.5.144 carried a Shai-Hulud worm on October 8 that steals GitHub and npm tokens, cloud keys and AI coding-tool configs. A dev.to write-up of StepSecurity's teardown says revoking the stolen GitHub token triggers an rm -rf ~/, so the service must go first.

Publishers:dev.to endorlabs.com

Reality

Evidence66
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+30
Incentives45
Confidence62
buildOne report1 publisher

Claude Code's deny rules missed an env-prefixed rm -rf in every 2.1.288 run

A dev.to tester ran TZ="$HOME" rm -rf build past a Claude Code 2.1.288 Bash(rm *) deny rule in 6 of 6 sandboxed runs. Version 2.1.289 stopped all six, but bash -c 'rm -rf build' still ran in 6 of 6 sandboxed runs on that build.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence68
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap−10
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence65
buildOne report1 publisher

Adversa AI hides instructions from Copilot CLI's guardrails inside ciphertext the agent decrypts itself

Adversa AI got GitHub Copilot CLI to decrypt and run a hidden instruction, and Microsoft's mai-code-1.1-flash fell for it 50 percent of the time. GitHub declined to treat it as a product vulnerability, so teams running autopilot have to check what the agent executes themselves.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+25
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence40
buildOne report1 publisher

Four coding-agent CVEs trace to approval gates that parse commands differently from the shell

Four September 2026 CVEs in Codex CLI, Roo-Code, OpenClaw and Ollama came from approval gates that read commands differently from the shell. Ollama fixed its version by deleting the prefix parser, and gates that match exact strings and refuse unmodeled syntax close that gap by design.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives30
Confidence50
buildOne report1 publisher

Claude Code's Read deny rules let grep -r and CLAUDE.md imports reach denied files

Claude Code 2.1.285's Read deny rules let 4 of 11 file-reading routes reach the model in a developer's test, among them grep -r and CLAUDE.md @imports. The docs limit the rules to named paths and point anyone needing a hard block to the OS sandbox.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives30
Confidence60
buildOne report1 publisher

An SCP deny outranks the admin role a coding agent borrows in AWS member accounts

One SCP deny line blocked an AdministratorAccess session in a scratch AWS account, according to a dev.to guide to sandboxing coding agents. Its three gaps, the management account, service-linked roles and outside principals admitted by resource policies, set where an agent can run.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap0
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence40
securityOne report1 publisher

Shai-Hulud's third wave printed SAP's npm token straight into a workflow log

Four core SAP build packages shipped an identical 11.6MB credential stealer. Because npm trusted the whole cap-js repository rather than one branch, a commit pushed to an unused branch was enough to publish them.

Publishers:stepsecurity.io

Reality

Evidence60
Adoption38
Hype gap+15
Incentives78
Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher

Eighteen flagged agent packages still install from npm weeks after the feeds listed them

AgentGate read the shipped code behind 30-plus OSV and GHSA flags, verified 19 npm packages as malicious, and found 18 still resolvable on publication day. Removal, not detection, is where the chain stopped.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence48
Adoption20
Hype gap+22
Incentives78
Confidence55
scienceOne report1 publisher

One authorization flaw survives both plan and default mode across six agent-built apps

Datadog Security Labs put one document-portal prompt through three coding agents in both modes and audited all six builds. An insecure direct object reference appeared in each, and one build per cell leaves mode effects entangled with noise.

Publishers:securitylabs.datadoghq.com

Reality

Evidence52
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+12
Incentives68
Confidence45
buildOne report1 publisher

Twenty-three security checks, zero coverage: AI coding agents as build-pipeline attack surface

Novee Security's Black Hat findings land the same lesson on three agents: a validator that inspects a cleaned-up copy of a command is not a control, and a sandbox built too late is not one either.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence42
Adoption55
Hype gap+27
Incentives68
Confidence45
leadershipOne report1 publisher

A config file that runs shell commands: "open this in Claude Code" needs a review gate

Check Point found Claude Code project configs could execute commands and steal Anthropic API keys on clone. Anthropic has patched it. The trust model it exposed is still yours to manage.

Publishers:research.checkpoint.com

Reality

Evidence70
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives65
Confidence60
buildOne report1 publisher

Your Coding Agent Reads .env, And .gitignore Was Never The Control

A dev.to writeup makes a point worth stealing: the secret leaves your machine in a prompt, not a commit. The proposed fix is a local proxy that masks values before egress.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence32
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+12
Incentives72
Confidence40
productOne report1 publisher

The allowlist read the command name, not what the command would do

CVE-2026-22708 let injected text rewrite a Cursor agent's environment, so an approved "git branch" ran something else. It worked with an empty allowlist too.

Publishers:docker.com

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption45
Hype gap+18
Incentives78
Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher

Decoys in the .env file: Jitpass bets on lying to your coding agent

A Mac utility replaces plaintext credentials with fake ones and injects the real value into an approved process after Touch ID. The pattern is now on every security team's evaluation list.

Publishers:runtimewire.com

Reality

Evidence36
Adoption9
Hype gap+28
Incentives68
Confidence38