Usually the asshole.

It’s you can modify the settings file you sure as hell can put the malware anywhere you want

True. (But in case it amuses you or others reading along:) But a code settings file still carries it’s own special risk, as an executable file, in a predictable place, that gets run regularly.

An executable settings file is particularly nice for the attacker, as it’s a great place to ensure that any injected code gets executed without much effort.

In particular, if an attacker can force a reboot, they know the settings file will get read reasonably early during the start-up process.

So a settings file that’s written in code can be useful for an attacker who can write to the disk (like through a poorly secured upload prompt), but doesn’t have full shell access yet.

They will typically upload a reverse shell, and use a line added to settings to ensure the reverse shell gets executed and starts listening for connections.

Edit (because it may also amuse anyone reading along): The same attack can be accomplished with a JSON or YAML settings file, but it relies on the JSON or YAML interpreter having a known critical security flaw. Thankfully most of them don’t usually have one, most of the time, if they’re kept up to date.

Yeah. The “this got dumped on us and we’re doing the minimum until we can replace it” is a genuinely solid use case for vibe coding.

And honestly, that’s all I usually did with those before AI came along anyway. So I welcome better tools for it.

If you want better software, you have to give developers worse hardware to develop on, and more time to develop.

Shhh. There could be application development managers listening… (I’m joking… Mostly.)

I like your idea, but hear me out:

A Python file for configuration is the best way to guarantee that any friendly code I write to help the user with config usually won’t execute. And I hate my users.

Yeah. Maybe .to_lower() is really expensive in their environment, lol.

Hey, that’s my username too. Or it was going to be, while the site was still up.

What a coincidence!

I guess I’ll wait for the site to come back, and see if it’s still available…

Today I learned the term Vibe Coding. I love it.

Edit: This article is a treasure.

The concept of vibe coding elaborates on Karpathy’s claim from 2023 that “the hottest new programming language is English”,

Claim from 2023?! Lol. I’ve heard (BASIC) that (COBOL) before (Ruby).

A key part of the definition of vibe coding is that the user accepts code without full understanding.[1] AI researcher Simon Willison said: “If an LLM wrote every line of your code, but you’ve reviewed, tested, and understood it all, that’s not vibe coding in my book—that’s using an LLM as a typing assistant.”[1]

Did we make it from AI hype to AI dunk in the space of a single Wikipedia article? Lol.

Lol. When I retire, I’m going to change all my job titles on social media to “entrepreneur” just to fuck with my friends.

Yes. I love the confidently incorrect additional comments explaining in detail how the incorrect code works.

Though I’m usually pretty angry at that point, it is also pretty funny.

Yes, that’s the joke.

AI creates almost (but not) good enough stuff really fast. And occasionally straight up hallucinates stuff that is meaningless or worse.

So this person has a huge stack of functional but broken crap, and it’s blaming X for their woes.

There’s an old saying that goes roughly “It takes four times the experience to maintain a program as it took to write it. So anyone writing the most clever program they can think of is, by definition, not competent to maintain it.”

In this case, it’s extra funny, because neither the AI nor the AI user has the faintest idea how the generated code works. So maintaining it is almost certainly 1000% outside their abilities.

So they’ve paid an AI for the privilege unpleasant daily panic of learning everything they need to learn after the app has gone to production, rather than before.

Yeah. Every farmer I’ve met was also a solid mechanic.

That’s pretty plausible. Inexperienced engineer plus overheating…good chance that adds up to a malware infection.

Yeah. Hiring inexperienced children into government isn’t fraud, by itself. But I bet it makes fraud way easier.

has Elmo only hired people who claim that they can “wrangle data” and say “yes” ?

There’s two issues going on:

1. Elmo’s sociopathic approach to laying people off is public knowledge, and top experts have the luxury of not even applying for his jobs.
2. Elmo’s ability to judge engineering talent has likely been wildly exaggerated thanks to how he has successfully bought organizations full of talented people, in the past.

Jokes on him. I push bugs to production all the time anyway.

So CISA released a statement that says absolutely fucking nothing.

I would have more respect remaining for them if they had the wisdom to shut up and let Musk take credit for all the stupid.

I guess they decided together the doublespeak department is too important to cut.

And rumor is DOGE has lousy opsec. And I suspect DOGE won’t be able to fix their opsec (after they start getting owned) because veteran engineers pay attention, and Musk seems incapable of loyalty.

Yeah. We found the thing we were pretty sure was there!

Though, if it’s really just local debug commands, then the usual “malice vs stupidity” debate is still up for grabs.

Yeah. I’m still looking for a good answer to create. There’s a huge number of technology mods in Luanti, but I haven’t found one with the same maturity, yet. If I find one that’s close, I may fork and update it, yet.

I think I’m most of the way to having AE2 replaced, for my needs, using Pipeworks and SWRobots.