Wiper prompt slipped into Amazon Q's official VS Code extension
What happened
An attacker used an over-scoped GitHub token in AWS's build pipeline to insert a prompt telling the Amazon Q coding assistant to wipe local files and cloud resources. The tampered version shipped to users of an extension with nearly a million installs, but a syntax error stopped it from running. AWS pulled it and released a fix.
Amazon Q Developer is AWS's AI coding assistant, and its VS Code extension had close to a million installs. An attacker used an over-scoped GitHub token in AWS's build process to add a prompt to the extension's code instructing the agent to wipe the user's system to a near-factory state and delete their AWS cloud resources. The tampered version, 1.84.0, was released on 17 July 2025 and reached users through the normal update channel. It was first reported by 404 Media, and the person responsible said they had done it to expose weak security.
How it happened
Supply chain and access: Poisoned package. A malicious or tampered AI package, extension, plugin or MCP server was published and installed by users.
The AI involved was from Amazon. The product was Amazon Q Developer, a type of coding assistant. Vulnerability IDs: CVE-2025-8217.
Impact
Data was destroyed or overwritten. Data involved: unknown. There is no evidence that anyone actually accessed the data.
Severity is rated Low, calculated from how far the incident reached and how sensitive the data was.
Was the AI at fault?
No. The failure was in the systems, settings or people around the AI, not in the model's behaviour.
Status and timeline
Confirmed by the affected organization, the AI vendor, a regulator or a named security research firm.
It happened or began on 17 Jul 2025. It became public on 23 Jul 2025, 6 days later.
AWS said a formatting error meant the prompt could not actually run, so no customer resources were affected. It revoked the credentials, removed the code, released a clean version and published a security advisory; the flaw was assigned CVE-2025-8217.