Using AI agents for data exfiltrating and RCE
A six-month research into AI-based development tools has disclosed over thirty security bugs that allow remote code execution (RCE) and data exfiltration. The findings by IDEsaster research revealed how AI agents deployed in IDEs like Visual Studio Code, Zed, JetBrains products and various commercial assistants can be tricked into leaking sensitive data or launching hacker-controlled code.
The research reports that 100% of tested AI IDEs and coding agents were vulnerable. Impacted products include GitHub, Windsurf, Copilot, Cursor, Kiro.dev, Zed.dev, Roo Code, Junie, Cline, Gemini CLI, and Claude Code. At least twenty-four assigned CVEs and additional AWS advisories were also included.
AI assistants exploitation
The main problem comes from the way AI agents interact with IDE features. Autonomous components that could read, edit, and create files were never intended for these editors. Once-harmless features turned become attack surfaces when AI agents acquired these skills. In their threat model, all AI IDEs essentially disregard the base software. Since these features have been around for years, they consider them to be naturally safe.
Attack tactic
However, the same functionalities can be weaponized into RCE primitives and data exfiltration once autonomous AI bots are included. The research reported that this is an IDE-agnostic attack chain.
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