How to compromise your system with a job interview
codedge.de72 points by codedge 3 hours ago
72 points by codedge 3 hours ago
There is a YC company that makes a coding interview tool. They want you to run their CLI on your machine and trust that it won't do anything malicious, when in fact it installs a bunch of things onto your machine without consent, scans processes, and intercepts requests from AI tools. It's crazy that people think this is acceptable.
Just that fact that the company expects a candidate to even have their own machine is egregious.
For all its talk of 'meritoctacy', the bay area really runs on looking the part.
What, you can't expect a candidate at least have a laptop?
What if your laptop is broken? You should be restricted from getting a job? What about if you just landed in the US and didn't want to have to present it to the authorities to scan and plan on buying a new one because they are cheaper there. What about if a family member was currently using it. There are plenty of valid reasons why you might not have a laptop in general or at the moment in your life.
Some people share laptops, others don’t have one at all and are fine with a tablet or smartphone.
Name the company
Litmus
I first thought this was a tongue in cheek joke before I realized you were the original commenter and looked them up.
I've described some prior experiences with some interviews as failing my litmus test and have cancelled further interviews when people start demand much too much from me before I'm on a payroll.
Even more reason to use VMs.
They (not what OP is talking about but usually these software) detect if a VM exists and abort, to prevent “cheating”.
How about no.
If you want me to run a particular piece of software, send me a fucking computer. If you want me to be on call on a company-managed cellphone, send me a phone that you can own and manage all you want.
Do not ask me to download, install, or run malware on MY computer or phone as part of the APPLICATION process. If you are the sort of company that thinks this is appropriate, then I do not want to work for you. I've actually turned down work because of this. "Oh, they just want you to install this Chrome extension to make sure you're not cheating during the video interview." No. Fuck you. Don't touch my fucking equipment.
I have a desktop that I use as a remote server for the GPU, so I'd be happy to disconnect the ssd and boot off a usb stick.
Maybe it's a pen test such that if the CLI can phone home you fail, to weed out candidates with weak security fu.
if that was the purpose it should weed out candidates who agreed to install the app for a job interview.
Being on the job hunt myself this is very helpful! I do however prepare public repos and showcases for such interviews/applications, I hope my luck streak doesnt run out
> “A relevant opportunity” with part-time remote work and a great hourly compensation
That is so suspicious at the moment.
out of the list under "Before you start with the test, you might be suspicious about the following:" there is only one that is important:
only interact with people using an official email address.
the rest can be used as yellow/red flags, but simply asking for confirmation via an official email address will thwart the vast majority of scams (including other ones, like someone claiming to be from Intuit calling about your QuickBooks or whatever).
I've been meaning to learn/run QEMU on my linux box. I assume I don't need to do anything apart from rebuild the image each time I need to do this?
Yes I most likely will tell them to get lost, but if I get an invite from Larry/Sergey I want to be ready.
Slop article. Good for scam awareness I guess, but the main value of the analysis and advice is comedy.
> read process.env directly, which in this app means MONGO_URI, JWT_SECRET, SENDGRID_API_KEY, CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET, PAYTM_MERCHANT_KEY
yeah it can run arbitrary malicious code, but let’s also highlight that it can read the fake app’s own dummy environment variables
> When the victim connects out to […], the server sees the source address on the accepted socket, exactly as any web server sees a visitor’s IP. No discovery, no scanning, no registration of an address. This is precisely why outbound-only design is so convenient for the attacker: it works behind NAT, CGNAT, a corporate proxy, or a home router with zero configuration, and it doesn’t matter if the victim’s IP changes.
huge
> If there is no UI/Desktop environment the module for leaking browser data or screenshots is self-limiting.
yeah this is why a VM is important, it’s because it doesn’t have a UI so screenshots don’t work
> … and reinstall your OS - better safe than sorry.
yeah just for thoroughness’s sake after having a RAT installed (hopefully you didn’t do this step last)
If you run across something like this:
* perhaps archive your findings
* report the abuse to their hosting
I'm dropping emails to jsonbin.io and to ZapHosting (who run 147.189.174.138) about this.
I get enough legit and illegitimate ones every week on LinkedIn that it's become really easy to tell the difference. Hard to pinpoint in a comment because it's mostly a gut feeling. But, in rough order:
1. Look at the person's LinkedIn profile contacting you and examine their post history. In one comical scenario the "recruiter" had a long 4 year gap where they were writing comments in English and all of the sudden they switched to Spanish. Mostly short, pointless comments as well.
2. Look at the company and make sure they have a legitimate website and are still actually in business. Even better, see if there's a public team page that lists this person.
3. Give the recruiter an email (I usually use something like SimpleLogin) and ask them to forward you the details. Of course, pay close attention to what address they send it from.
4. In addition, or alternatively, ask the recruiter for the public job listing (scammers almost always "paste" it into a DM or upload a clearly AI generated PDF doc).
Once you learn the game it's not too hard to start picking up on them. I've made it a game to play along sometimes just for fun. Ultimately, at the end of the day, make sure you report them on LinkedIn. I've had the account disappear within a hour of doing so.
Honestly unless I'm planning on quitting my current job, or if I were unemployed, I just ignore the linkedin.
Sure they spam you with "XX wants to connect", or "I'm awaiting your reply" emails. But real contacts and friends can call/email you, and everybody else can wait six months.
Despite only connecting with actual people I've worked with, not recruiters, I still get "suggested" posts which are slop, and "that happened". The site is a cesspool.
These seem like a common pattern lately. I feel for it but again people are creative in making business out of others desperation.
.... Why would you do job interview when they expect you to run some code on your own system, on your own time?
Maybe I work in a different field but last year when I was still looking for jobs, only one company asked for coding assignment and every other company did coding interview which is always browser based editor.
I feel like the industry is mature enough that you can tell a company that sends you a zip file of code to f-off.
> .... Why would you do job interview when they expect you to run some code on your own system, on your own time?
Because both the company and you know it’s the most effective job interview “filter” in SWE roles.
> on your own time
It may not be unpaid if you’re applying to a decent company.
The issue here is their poor implementation (zip file), not the concept itself, IMO.
I remember reading a similar article here not long ago, and the attack relied on auto-loading in VSCode.
https://opensourcemalware.com/blog/latest-contagious-intervi...
wonder if codex can catch issues ?
> A note on the AI part: Claude Code was not able to detect any strange things when just prompted to scan the code base for unusual patterns.
It reads like a true crime story.
Bad actor had prepared the set up so precisely that Claude Code could not detect it.
Malware Bytes? Acronis? There must be some template…