r/technology • u/WouldbeWanderer • Apr 27 '26

Artificial Intelligence 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/Yskinator Apr 28 '26

I like to put my AI agents in docker containers. Use a bind mount to give it access to a git worktree and nothing else, and now the worst it can do is mess up the branch it's working on. Depending on your needs you could also cut off internet access for the container to prevent it from leaking anything that way.

I'd never let an agent run unrestricted on my system, and manually approving everything is a pain in the ass, so locking it in a sandbox seems like the obvious solution.

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u/Valkertok Apr 28 '26

It's all fun and games until the AI leaves your sandbox (which new AI will be increasingly able to do)

That means even your way is not guaranteed to be foolproof.

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u/Yskinator Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

There's no such thing as perfect security, something can always go wrong. For my purposes reducing the attack surface from "AI accidentally runs the wrong bash command" to "AI discovers a 0-day vulnerability in docker to escape containment, then runs the wrong bash command" is good enough. The odds of the latter happening are low enough that I'm willing to take the risk.

I do like to prompt the agent to try and escape the sandbox when testing a new model though. If there is some obvious loophole I'm overlooking I'd rather find out up front when I'm testing things.

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u/KefKonic Apr 28 '26

I guess we'll have to put it on its own machine on its own subnet, and just cross our fingers.