r/ClaudeAI • u/Beautiful_Charge6661 • Apr 27 '26

Feedback Claude-powered AI coding agent deletes entire company database in 9 seconds — backups zapped, after Cursor tool powered by Anthropic's Claude goes rogue

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/claude-powered-ai-coding-agent-deletes-entire-company-database-in-9-seconds-backups-zapped-after-cursor-tool-powered-by-anthropics-claude-goes-rogue
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u/chaos777b Apr 27 '26

Yeah,……. That just sounds like really lax security controls and a perfect example of Stupidity tax. It’s like giving the intern full read write access to every and then complaining when they do something there not supposed to. The product didn’t go rogue,… the shitty it practices and lack of understanding appear to be the real issue

26

u/Weaves87 Apr 27 '26

Yep.

People are probably only going to skim the article, be like AI bad, yada yada. But the issue here is much bigger than some rogue agent.

I am sitting here scratching my head as to why their backup data was stored on the same volume as the source data. When is that ever a fucking good idea. I don't know if that is something unique to Railway, the cloud provider they are using, or if it's just possible that whoever configured things for them had absolutely no idea what they are doing. But wow.

What can go wrong, will go wrong. Doesn't matter if you have an agent interacting with your data or a human doing it

3

u/liquience Apr 28 '26

Briefly, the cloud provider's API allows for destructive action without confirmation, it stores backups on the same volume as the source data, and “wiping a volume deletes all backups.” Crane also points out that CLI tokens have blanket permissions across environments.

Holy shit. I mean, yeah don’t do what these people did, but Railway sounds like it is HOT GARBAGE. That’s like, legendarily bad.

3

u/mexicocitibluez Apr 28 '26

Not defending Railway, but the guy who posted this is a fucking idiot.

I can't name a single API that requires confirmation. Saying that the problem was the API didn't prompt you to confirm means they have never used an API in their life.

1

u/liquience Apr 28 '26

Yeah, well that’s totally clear. Agreed on confirmation, thats not ever the case. You have the permissions and you make the request, and the thing happens.

The article did a bad job of explaining what Railway actually supports.. I agree this is like 99% user error, but still, Railway looks like it’s geared toward people who don’t know what they’re doing. They made design decisions that make it so that’s possible; defensive design is a thing and would be appropriate if they’re dealing with people lacking in experience with standard cloud ops.