Black Hat · August 29, 2026

Black Hat Asia 2026 | Bad Vibes - Pwning Coding Agents 70 Times With The Same Bugs

Black Hat Asia 2026 | Bad Vibes - Pwning Coding Agents 70 Times With The Same Bugs video thumbnail
Why it matters

Palo Alto Networks researchers found the same command-parser, protected-path, and sandbox-boundary failures across major coding agents. Their survey produced more than 81 vendor reports and 18 assigned or reserved CVEs, including allowlist bypasses through compound shell syntax, path-equivalence errors, unsafe moves and symlinks, and gaps between file and terminal controls.

My takeaway: Run coding agents in an isolated container or VM and enforce one policy across terminal and file tools. Parse the complete command using the target shell, canonicalize resolved paths and nonexistent descendants, mediate moves and symlinks, and regression-test compound commands, alternate path forms, configuration writes, symlink races, and prompt-injection-driven execution.
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