$NEIRO

🔥 What’s Happening

SlowMist, a major blockchain cybersecurity firm, has issued an urgent warning about a critical vulnerability in AI‑powered coding tools and modern IDEs (Integrated Development Environments). According to their alert:

Simply opening an untrusted project folder in an IDE that uses AI coding assistants can trigger silent execution of harmful code on your machine — without running any scripts manually.

This affects developers on both Windows and macOS platforms and has already been associated with real compromise incidents.

🧠 How the Exploit Works

The attack abuses how AI coding tools interpret project files like README.md and LICENSE.txt.

Attackers embed malicious prompts hidden inside comments that the AI reads as commands. These can trigger malware or backdoors when the IDE processes the folder.

Tools like Cursor (and others) are particularly at risk in demonstrations of this exploit.

🪙 Why Crypto Developers Are Especially at Risk

Developers working on crypto projects often store private keys, API credentials, wallet seeds, or deployment scripts locally. If a development machine gets compromised through this vector:

Malware can exfiltrate private keys or credentials.

Attackers can then steal crypto funds, manipulate contracts, or gain persistent access.

This isn’t just theoretical — reports indicate developers have already experienced compromises tied to this kind of attack pattern.

🦠 Not an Isolated Issue — Broader Context

This alert fits into a larger trend where AI tools themselves (or the ecosystems they are embedded in) are becoming attack surfaces:

Past SlowMist findings have included exploits exposing exchange API keys and private keys in AI‑based trading systems.

AI systems have even been used to uncover zero‑day vulnerabilities worth millions in smart contracts — illustrating how dual‑use AI can be for both defenders