A hacker planted data wiping code in a version of Amazon's generative AI-powered assistant, the Q Developer Extension for Visual Studio Code. As reported by 404 Media, on July 13, a hacker using the alias ‘lkmanka58’ added unapproved code on Amazon Q’s GitHub to inject a defective wiper that wouldn’t cause any harm, but rather sent a message about AI coding security. “AWS is aware of and has addressed an issue in the Amazon Q Developer Extension for Visual Studio Code (VSC). Amazon Q is a free extension that uses generative AI to help developers code, debug, create documentation, and set up custom configurations. Despite these assurances, some have reported that the malicious code actually executed but didn’t cause any harm, noting that this should still be treated as a significant security incident. Security researchers reported a potential for unapproved code modification,” reads the security bulletin. On July 23, Amazon received reports from security researchers that something was wrong with the extension and the company started to investigate. Amazon was completely unaware of the breach and published the compromised version, 1.84.0, on the VSC market on July 17, making it available to the entire user base. Bill Toulas Bill Toulas is a tech writer and infosec news reporter with over a decade of experience working on various online publications, covering open-source, Linux, malware, data breach incidents, and hacks. It is available on Microsoft’s Visual Code Studio (VCS) marketplace, where it counts nearly one million installs.
This Cyber News was published on www.bleepingcomputer.com. Publication date: Fri, 25 Jul 2025 20:45:18 +0000