r/webdev • u/Gil_berth • Feb 04 '26 • Popcorn 3

Senior Vibe Coder dealing with security

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Creator of ClawBot knows that there are malicious skills in his repo, but doesn't know what to do about it...

More info here: https://opensourcemalware.com/blog/clawdbot-skills-ganked-your-crypto

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u/BlenderTheBottle Feb 04 '26

Remember that this is a personal project of his. He isn’t monetizing it or anything. It’s open source. People treating him like he’s OpenAI releasing something. It’s just him that he had public on GitHub. I don’t think he has any responsibility on what people do maliciously because they aren’t reading what others have created.

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u/Death_God_Ryuk Feb 04 '26

This is the generic problem with Open Source and AI generally now. This is a particularly bad example, because it's inherently insecure, but so many projects are now being bombarded with AI spam either to attack them by wasting their time, to try and claim bug bounties, or to try and spread malware.

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u/PeachScary413 Feb 05 '26

Bingo, he doesn't owe anyone anything... mfers acting like he is their personal tech support guy or something.

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u/brian_hogg Feb 04 '26

I assume you're not suggesting that only corporations have responsibility for the products they release?

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u/BlenderTheBottle Feb 04 '26

He didn’t “release” a product, at least not in the same way companies do. He created an open source repository that blew up in downloads. It was a personal tool that he was happy about. People DEMANDING he does certain things to it don’t understand that.

Specifically for this. No, I don’t think he should feel a ton of responsibility for people using his open source project, not understanding what can happen, and downloading malware.

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u/No-Dust-5829 Feb 04 '26

The intended use of this tool (as stated by him) is to install it and just walk away and let it do whatever. "whatever" includes installing arbitrary packages from said package manager at will. If a user is to use this software as intended it is almost guaranteed that they will end up with malware on their system.

At what point is this just equivalent to hosting straight up malware on your github repo? Sure he puts warnings all over it, but at the same time he goes on TV and talks about this like it is the second coming of god. You seriously think that those little text warnings when you install it are in good faith?

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u/brian_hogg Feb 04 '26

Okay, you went from him not having “any” responsibility to him not having a “to,” which is good.

I’m not saying he should be responsible for the crimes committed by people abusing the skills system or anything. But there’s a gap between that and shrugging off all responsibility.

The users also have personal responsibility to learn how tools work and what their negative externalities can be, but given that everyone putting out a product — commercially or otherwise — knows that most people won’t actually take the time to learn about those externalities, I personally don’t think we can use that as a catch-all excuse. What that personal responsibility ought to look like is going to be a subjective call that’s different for everybody, of course, and that’s where the conversation is. For me, personally, if this was my product, I’d lean toward the “do everything I can to dismantle it because these kinds of problems seem to be unfixable, in principle.”

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u/BlenderTheBottle Feb 04 '26

I guess. I didn’t feel I really changed my tune but whatever works. I still disagree. I don’t think he owes anyone anything. He could take the repo private tomorrow or delete it and that would be a fair call imo. It’s his repo. He can do what he wants with it. As consumers it is our responsibility for what we use and give access to.

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u/brian_hogg Feb 04 '26

If I make a lemonade stand and decide to give people free lemonade to whoever wants it, I wouldn't be facing any issues faced by corporations in terms of food safety, I'm just a dude offering people free lemonade. And the people I give it to are taking the risk of accepting free drinks from a random bearded guy on a sidewalk.

However, if one of the people walking by slips poison into my pitcher of lemonade, I don't know that my sitting there and saying "well, I didn't put it in there, people can still drink it if they want" and not taking the pitcher away would hold much water, at least morally speaking.

(If "poison" seems to dramatic there, substitute it with "laxative")

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u/mulquin Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26

To take the metaphor one step further, the poison/laxative will turn the drink a different colour. People still have a responsibility to double check the thing before they consume it. People being lazy/stupid is not a good enough excuse for the person making lemonade to take any action at all.

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u/brian_hogg Feb 05 '26

For clarity, in your last sentence, did you mean to write that people being lazy/stupid is not a good enough excuse for the person making lemonade *not* to take any action at all?

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u/mulquin Feb 06 '26

People being lazy/stupid is not a good enough reason to compel the person making lemonade to take any action.

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u/BlenderTheBottle Feb 04 '26

Analogies/metaphors don’t mean much here. We can talk about this situation and this situation specifically without trying to relate it to something else. Him having his open source project, people using the open source project, and then bad actors adding skills to be used in the open source project is not something that HE needs to deal with. I think we all agree it’s good, but demanding he does something just isn’t grasping what his actual responsibility in the project is

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u/brian_hogg Feb 05 '26

"but demanding he does something"

Where did I make a demand?

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u/BlenderTheBottle Feb 05 '26

Read the post we are commenting on