Right just as I take my first day off (for the entire year!) from work to fly out for a vacation. The mother of all security bombs starts dropping all around stacks and services that I am responsible for. How else could have taken time off go for me…
Seen multiple folks in the Railway Discord confirming that their secrets stored in Railway have been used by third parties, so it definitely sounds like the attackers were able to read decrypted environment variables.
The security team at my company is working with a frontier lab to scan all our code/systems. They are in a borderline panic to close every possible issue, even innocuous ones that are buried under defense in depth. Whatever they are seeing from our partner has them spooked -- as in "acceptable risk" is no longer a thing anymore.
I fully believe the only sustainable future is that hot patching will need to itself become fully automated. Hot patch now with a minimal allowed amount of line changes to head off the AIs, review it in office hours for auditing and the team is actually awake.
My second belief is that environment variables as a development concept will need to be retired. If it's something that causes a security breach if it by its mere existence on a public git repo, it is information that by design cannot ever pass to a filesystem out of a chain of trust, not by mere development conventions people choose to adhere to.
Due to the small nature of hot patching (eg. bump this dependency, rotate these keys, turn off that config, follow the runbook) it will unlikely need to be a frontier model and is likely able to be done LocalLLM/Jev style decision making rather than having to hand all the keys to frontier model operators.
It’s funny that every security breach disclosure now has a mandatory “the attacker used AI!” as if it absolves you from having to maintain a secure system. If anything it makes the situation more damning. If it was possible to find exploits using AI then your own red teaming should have found them before the attacker did.
> It’s funny that every security breach disclosure now has a mandatory “the attacker used AI!”
This isn't in the article? They do not at all claim "the attacked used AI!".
The only mention of "AI" is "We believe this is part of a series of attacks recently targeting platform companies with the aim of compromising AI inference providers." This is the same (apparently) end-goal as the Opencode breach last week, and is not blaming or finger-point at AI. It is stating (rightfully) that AI inference is very easy to resell and turn stolen credentials into cash.
Defending is so much harder than attacking. You don't even have to focus on one target, as you can just mass-AI-script a lot of attacks wherever it's possible, and see what sticks. Even if you did everything right, there's always the social-engineering angle, or a single compromised device, or just accidental bad upgrade through supply chain. If you can mass-spread the seed, and plant something that "calls home" constantly, you can just have an agent that would start the attack the minute it gets infected, and go deeper.
It's really a wild west right now, have no idea how we fix it. I'm assuming everything will get more concentrated in big co's hands, as having a very robust security is extremely hard.
Also, we have to agree that younger people will start companies. There will be small companies that cannot afford red teams. There will be companies that are just not equipped, and their profit margins cannot sustain constant attacks.
> your own red teaming should have found them before the attacker did
Easier said than done. The defender has to do everything right, all the time, to prevent a headline like this. The attacker only needs to be right once, and it's game over. AI or no AI.
I didn’t actually see that in this post at all. They mention that the end goal of the attackers might be to get to AI inference providers. But I don’t think they are crying “AI was used” here.
I'm already tired, between pushing back on vibe coded internal projects being put onto the internet and then the constant barrage of CVEs that mean nothing.
Then you have real security incidents that you need to tune into constantly.
I really don't know how we are going to deal with accelerated exploit generation via LLMs — it blows up the disclosure processes we've evolved.
The only thing I can think of is hunkering down with static HTML to reduce attack surface, but that's laughably incompatible with many many business requirements.
I think it will kill open source to some degree. I found it already very hard to imagine how the endless queues of issues were being dealt with so diligently, but at least there was a human on the other side. The torrent that is unleashed now is not manageable on a human scale. It's a highly automated arms race with a bunch of good-willing humans caught in the crossfire between large companies and criminals duking it out.
Yes, so who will pay for that? Open source so far meant you would use your brains and your creativity, now you need to use your money too if you want to keep pace. From a 'guts, credits & glory' proposition to 'slop processor if you can afford it' is not really an upgrade.
Prompting the LLM to "look for vulnerabilities in PHP's multipart upload handling code" is going to find stuff that "look for vulnerabilities in PHP" won't.
how are the secrets decrypted, I would like some explanation so that I can have some understanding here, I am starting to feel like all these companies are just meme-ing with their security posture.
Like did someone vibe code too hard, how do env secrets leak for everyone...
Well this is certainly interesting, I wonder how their secrets were being stored, I assumed they were stored in vault and then injected with a sidecar, but I guess not
Of course, it was a giant scam that tested for nothing and optimized for how to pass a test.
Let's see if companies are ready to hire more people who know what they are doing, against a super-intelligent swarm of millions of agents with cyber capabilities.
Postiz founder posted on X that his service is being brought down, his keys were already used and Railway was quiet about this until he spoke up:
https://x.com/wickedguro/status/2113015432974405658
Right just as I take my first day off (for the entire year!) from work to fly out for a vacation. The mother of all security bombs starts dropping all around stacks and services that I am responsible for. How else could have taken time off go for me…
Prioritize your mental health, go enjoy your vacation.
Seen multiple folks in the Railway Discord confirming that their secrets stored in Railway have been used by third parties, so it definitely sounds like the attackers were able to read decrypted environment variables.
I have a bad gut feeling that every day is going to look a bit like today with endless urgent patches and breaches.
Fwiw it sounds similar to the hack over the weekend that opencode suffered.
The security team at my company is working with a frontier lab to scan all our code/systems. They are in a borderline panic to close every possible issue, even innocuous ones that are buried under defense in depth. Whatever they are seeing from our partner has them spooked -- as in "acceptable risk" is no longer a thing anymore.
I fully believe the only sustainable future is that hot patching will need to itself become fully automated. Hot patch now with a minimal allowed amount of line changes to head off the AIs, review it in office hours for auditing and the team is actually awake.
My second belief is that environment variables as a development concept will need to be retired. If it's something that causes a security breach if it by its mere existence on a public git repo, it is information that by design cannot ever pass to a filesystem out of a chain of trust, not by mere development conventions people choose to adhere to.
> hot patching will need to itself become fully automated.
Great, even less control over the things we use and more power ceded to corporations.
Due to the small nature of hot patching (eg. bump this dependency, rotate these keys, turn off that config, follow the runbook) it will unlikely need to be a frontier model and is likely able to be done LocalLLM/Jev style decision making rather than having to hand all the keys to frontier model operators.
Hot patching is itself a liability
It's only just starting. It'll get worse before it gets better.
I think the only way out is to go back to on-prem for everything, like in the 00s.
LAN cables will go up in price soon.
How does on-prem help if your product is a SaaS.
You open a SaaS shop where people come to use it
Instead of being a SaaS it will need to just become a S
You put the SaaS into a Box your customers can install into their datacenter!
surely once there's been enough patches the code will be perfect though?
It’s funny that every security breach disclosure now has a mandatory “the attacker used AI!” as if it absolves you from having to maintain a secure system. If anything it makes the situation more damning. If it was possible to find exploits using AI then your own red teaming should have found them before the attacker did.
> It’s funny that every security breach disclosure now has a mandatory “the attacker used AI!”
This isn't in the article? They do not at all claim "the attacked used AI!".
The only mention of "AI" is "We believe this is part of a series of attacks recently targeting platform companies with the aim of compromising AI inference providers." This is the same (apparently) end-goal as the Opencode breach last week, and is not blaming or finger-point at AI. It is stating (rightfully) that AI inference is very easy to resell and turn stolen credentials into cash.
Defending is so much harder than attacking. You don't even have to focus on one target, as you can just mass-AI-script a lot of attacks wherever it's possible, and see what sticks. Even if you did everything right, there's always the social-engineering angle, or a single compromised device, or just accidental bad upgrade through supply chain. If you can mass-spread the seed, and plant something that "calls home" constantly, you can just have an agent that would start the attack the minute it gets infected, and go deeper.
It's really a wild west right now, have no idea how we fix it. I'm assuming everything will get more concentrated in big co's hands, as having a very robust security is extremely hard.
Also, we have to agree that younger people will start companies. There will be small companies that cannot afford red teams. There will be companies that are just not equipped, and their profit margins cannot sustain constant attacks.
> your own red teaming should have found them before the attacker did
Easier said than done. The defender has to do everything right, all the time, to prevent a headline like this. The attacker only needs to be right once, and it's game over. AI or no AI.
Unless they edited the post, they never said this. You should delete this; it's false information.
I didn’t actually see that in this post at all. They mention that the end goal of the attackers might be to get to AI inference providers. But I don’t think they are crying “AI was used” here.
Or did I miss something?
This one doesn’t?
Jeez, what a rough past 24 hours for all security folk. Hang in there
I'm already tired, between pushing back on vibe coded internal projects being put onto the internet and then the constant barrage of CVEs that mean nothing.
Then you have real security incidents that you need to tune into constantly.
It's going to be a rough decade.
I really don't know how we are going to deal with accelerated exploit generation via LLMs — it blows up the disclosure processes we've evolved.
The only thing I can think of is hunkering down with static HTML to reduce attack surface, but that's laughably incompatible with many many business requirements.
I think it will kill open source to some degree. I found it already very hard to imagine how the endless queues of issues were being dealt with so diligently, but at least there was a human on the other side. The torrent that is unleashed now is not manageable on a human scale. It's a highly automated arms race with a bunch of good-willing humans caught in the crossfire between large companies and criminals duking it out.
It feels like the only solution is going to be proactively running your own AI agents looking for patches and applying them.
Yes, so who will pay for that? Open source so far meant you would use your brains and your creativity, now you need to use your money too if you want to keep pace. From a 'guts, credits & glory' proposition to 'slop processor if you can afford it' is not really an upgrade.
The issue is where to direct the LLM's attention.
Prompting the LLM to "look for vulnerabilities in PHP's multipart upload handling code" is going to find stuff that "look for vulnerabilities in PHP" won't.
job security!
how are the secrets decrypted, I would like some explanation so that I can have some understanding here, I am starting to feel like all these companies are just meme-ing with their security posture.
Like did someone vibe code too hard, how do env secrets leak for everyone...
Easy, all the bad guys need to do is access whatever system stores the decryption keys.
How is it possible rotate keys if you disable deployments? You're basically telling us to take our services offline...
I've already taken my applications offline and will be migrating to a new host...
Do cloud providers have a lock-down mode where you can press 1 button and stop all spend?
Huh, I've been using Railway tonight and this was the first I've seen of this. Just got an email about it now too at 23:36
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50177413
Is this our new AI daily reality?
companies probably have php and Python applications exposed to the web and nobody knows.
the speed of irresponsible deployments is infinite now, by design
The past two days have been awful as someone who uses Railway.
If you're on Railway do not wait, ROTATE every API key at the source, and do not set new values because Railway is still compromised and not secured.
Well this is certainly interesting, I wonder how their secrets were being stored, I assumed they were stored in vault and then injected with a sidecar, but I guess not
Train wreck
Fuck, I thought this was about trains
Damn I guess all those l33t hiring practices were for nothing
Of course, it was a giant scam that tested for nothing and optimized for how to pass a test.
Let's see if companies are ready to hire more people who know what they are doing, against a super-intelligent swarm of millions of agents with cyber capabilities.