Agents turned attack vector in code security checks
🔍 Researchers at the AI Now Institute demonstrated a proof-of-concept called "Friendly Fire" where autonomous AI coding agents (Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex) execute an attacker's binary when asked to scan untrusted open-source code. The attack hides a malicious binary alongside benign files and a README that prompts the agent to run a security script; in auto-modes the agents approved and executed it without prompting. The weakness is framed as a workflow/design issue rather than a single vulnerable version, and the researchers recommend never giving command-capable agents unattended access to untrusted code.
