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Researchers cause GitLab AI developer assistant to turn safe code malicious
AI assistants can’t be trusted to produce safe code.
Developer platform GitLab, for instance, claims its Duo chatbot can “instantly generate a to-do list” that eliminates the burden of “wading through weeks of commits.” What these companies don’t say is that these tools are, by temperament if not default, easily tricked by malicious actors into performing hostile actions against their users. “This vulnerability highlights the double-edged nature of AI assistants like GitLab Duo: when deeply integrated into development workflows, they inherit not just context—but risk,” Legit researcher Omer Mayraz wrote. “By embedding hidden instructions in seemingly harmless project content, we were able to manipulate Duo’s behavior, exfiltrate private source code, and demonstrate how AI responses can be leveraged for unintended and harmful outcomes.”
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