[HN Gopher] AWS merges malicious PR into Amazon Q
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AWS merges malicious PR into Amazon Q
Author : QuinnyPig
Score : 24 points
Date : 2025-07-23 19:28 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lastweekinaws.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lastweekinaws.com)
| skywhopper wrote:
| I'm curious exactly what happened here. The 404media article
| isn't detailed enough to be sure. My guess is the PR took
| advantage of some code injection possibilities in the GitHub
| Actions on the repo to grant the attacker admin access. But
| that's a wild guess.
| QuinnyPig wrote:
| Exactly my position. I can't realistically assess the potential
| scope of damage without a proper disclosure from AWS's
| normally-excellent security team.
| shdjhdfh wrote:
| Your article breathlessly blames AWS for being reckless while
| having no real facts about the compromise. The whole thing
| reads like click bait.
| shdjhdfh wrote:
| The prompt 404 quotes in the article doesn't appear to exist
| anywhere in the git history for the repo they point to. It
| seems unlikely that Amazon would rewrite git history to hide
| this. Maybe the change was in a repo pulled in as a dependency.
| shdjhdfh wrote:
| Ah, I think it might have been this, which was reverted and
| seems to have been pushed directly to master:
| https://github.com/aws/aws-toolkit-
| vscode/commit/678851bbe97...
| personalcompute wrote:
| I think you've got it!
|
| - That commit's date matches the date in the 404media
| article (July 13th)
|
| - The commit message is totally unrelated to the code
| (highly suspicious)
|
| - The code itself downloads additional code at runtime
| (highly highly suspicious)
|
| I have not yet been unable to uncover the code it downloads
| though. It downloaded code that was hosted in the same
| repo, https://github.com/aws/aws-toolkit-vscode/, just on
| the "stability" branch. (downloads a file called
| "scripts/extensionNode.bk") The "stability" branch
| presumably was a branch created by the attacker, and has
| presumably since been deleted by Amazon.
| shdjhdfh wrote:
| Another thing to note, the AI angle on this is nonsensical.
| The commit could have just as easily done many other
| negative things to the system without AI as a layer of
| indirection.
| gruez wrote:
| >My guess is the PR took advantage of some code injection
| possibilities in the GitHub Actions on the repo to grant the
| attacker admin access. But that's a wild guess.
|
| Someone below mentioned the offending commit[1], which seems to
| be a doppelganger of another commit[2]
|
| [1] https://github.com/aws/aws-toolkit-
| vscode/commit/678851bbe97...
|
| [2] https://github.com/aws/aws-toolkit-
| vscode/commit/d1959b99684...
| blibble wrote:
| I guess they put their AI in charge of code review?
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(page generated 2025-07-23 23:02 UTC)