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Assume the machine is compromised. Disconnect Ethernet and Wi-Fi (or place the endpoint in managed isolation), stop using it for source control and cloud access, preserve useful evidence, and use a known-clean device to revoke every credential the workstation could reach. Then investigate repositories and CI/CD activity. If you cannot rule out credential theft or persistence, rebuild from a trusted operating-system image instead of trusting an uninstall or one antivirus scan. Reconnect only after validation, patching, and monitoring are complete.
A fake AI installer or malicious editor extension can run with your developer privileges, read files and credential stores, alter startup behavior, and use your normal network access. The response therefore has two goals: stop further access while evidence still exists, and restore a workstation you can reasonably trust without carrying the compromise into GitHub, package registries, cloud accounts, or production systems.
1. Stop activity and contain the workstation
Stop using the suspect computer for Git operations, cloud consoles, production systems, email, password managers, and personal accounts. Do not keep working while you investigate; every additional login or commit can expose another secret or overwrite useful evidence.
Disconnect it immediately
- Unplug Ethernet.
- Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and disconnect any mobile hotspot or VPN connection.
- Remove external drives and other removable media that are not needed for evidence preservation.
- If your organization has endpoint management, use its device-isolation control. Microsoft describes isolation as a way to block attacker control, data exfiltration, and lateral movement while security telemetry can remain available.
Physical disconnection is simple and fast but can discard security-tool telemetry that a managed isolation action would preserve. If you cannot isolate the machine reliably, power it down to limit spread. A shutdown can destroy volatile memory evidence, so use that option when limiting further access is more important than collecting live state.
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| Containment option | Strength | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Ethernet and Wi-Fi disconnected | Immediate, independent of installed software | May lose managed telemetry and makes remote evidence collection harder |
| Managed endpoint isolation | Blocks network control and exfiltration while preserving security-tool visibility where supported | Requires an available management service and an administrator who can trigger it |
| Power off | Stops active network behavior when isolation cannot be trusted | Destroys volatile evidence and interrupts live-response collection |
Do not open the suspected installer or extension again to see what it does. Repeated execution can alter logs, create additional persistence, or send more data.
2. Preserve evidence before cleaning
Before deleting files or reinstalling, record what happened while the information is still available. Evidence helps determine which accounts and repositories require emergency action and gives an incident-response team enough detail to investigate.
Record the initial facts
- The exact installer, package, or extension name, publisher, and version.
- Where it was downloaded, including the download URL and the official or unofficial store used.
- Installation and first-execution times, in your local time zone.
- File hashes, endpoint alerts, suspicious process names, and unusual network destinations.
- Browser, shell, editor, package-manager, and operating-system activity around the installation.
- Account notifications, token-creation events, pull requests, workflow runs, or cloud alerts that appeared afterward.
Capture screenshots of suspicious activity, export endpoint and firewall logs, and save GitHub, cloud, and CI/CD query results while they remain available. GitHub’s incident-response guidance specifically recommends taking screenshots, exporting logs or query results, and saving copies of affected files or code before cleanup.
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Store exports on approved, access-controlled media or an incident-response location. Do not upload source code, customer data, private keys, or disk images to an unapproved online scanner. Do not modify the original evidence merely to make a scanner accept it. If the computer handled regulated information, customer records, signing keys, or production access, contact your organization’s incident-response and legal or privacy contacts before destructive cleanup.
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A managed endpoint tool may offer an investigation package, live response, or a targeted antivirus scan. Collect those artifacts before rebuilding when your security team needs them, but treat a clean scan as one data point—not proof that an attacker did not use a new payload, delete itself, or establish persistence outside the scanner’s coverage.
3. Revoke credentials from a known-clean device
Use a different computer or a freshly trusted administrative workstation. Do not change credentials from the suspected host: malware could capture the replacement values or reuse the active session.
Revoke first, then issue new credentials with the narrowest practical permissions. Prioritize privileged, long-lived, reusable, and signing credentials. Disable active sessions and require fresh authentication wherever the provider supports it.
| Access exposed on the workstation | Action from the clean device | What to review afterward |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or other repository tokens | Revoke personal-access and fine-grained tokens; create replacements with only required scopes | Sign-in, token-creation, repository, pull-request, and workflow audit events |
| Cloud credentials | Disable and rotate identities, access keys, service-account keys, and temporary sessions for every reachable account | Cloud audit trails for secret reads, new users, policy changes, unusual regions, and outbound activity |
| API keys | Revoke keys used by the fake tool, local scripts, SDKs, and environment variables; issue replacements with usage limits | Requests after the installation time, unexpected endpoints, and spikes in usage |
| SSH keys | Remove compromised public keys from accounts and servers, revoke certificates where applicable, and generate new key pairs | SSH login records, source addresses, and new-key events |
| Package-registry credentials | Rotate npm, PyPI, Docker, and other registry tokens; invalidate remembered sessions | Package publishes, downloads, maintainer changes, and automated-account activity |
| CI/CD secrets | Rotate repository, organization, environment, runner, signing, and deployment secrets | Workflow runs, runner jobs, artifact downloads, and secret-access events |
| Vault, Terraform, Kubernetes, or orchestration credentials | Revoke tokens and leases, rotate service identities, and invalidate kubeconfig or state-backend access | Audit events for secret reads, cluster changes, workloads, and state-file access |
| Passwords and OAuth grants | Change passwords from the clean device, revoke refresh tokens, remove unfamiliar OAuth applications, and re-enroll strong MFA | New consent grants, session locations, recovery changes, and impossible-travel or unfamiliar-device alerts |
CISA’s May 28, 2026 advisory names AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, SSH, Docker, npm, PyPI, Vault, Terraform, Kubernetes, GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket credentials as examples of secrets that may need rotation or revocation after malicious developer tooling is involved. The relevant scope is every credential that was present, cached, mounted, available through environment variables, or reachable through an authenticated browser session—not merely the key you remember using.
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4. Determine whether accounts or code were used
Containment protects the present; scoping establishes what happened after installation. Set the installation time as your initial search boundary, then extend the review if logs show earlier activity.
Repository and source-code review
- Inspect Git history, branches, tags, pull requests, reviews, and protected-branch settings for changes you did not authorize.
- Search workflow files, release jobs, package manifests, and lockfiles for added download steps, obfuscated scripts, new actions, changed registries, or altered permissions.
- Compare suspicious commits with known-good copies and preserve the affected versions before reverting them.
- Review dependency graphs and extension inventories for packages or extensions installed, upgraded, or downgraded near the event.
Automation and cloud review
- Examine CI/CD workflow runs, runner logs, artifacts, and deployment records for unexpected jobs, destinations, or secret use.
- Query cloud audit trails for credential reads, policy changes, new identities, storage access, and unusual outbound connections.
- Check automated accounts, bots, deploy keys, package publishers, and service principals for activity that does not match a normal release.
- Review account activity, token-creation events, OAuth-consent records, and sign-in locations for the period after installation.
CISA advises conducting a forensics review of CI/CD logs, cloud audit trails, and affected developer machines. GitHub’s incident-response guidance says that if a signal cannot quickly be ruled out as a false positive, assume it is real and proceed to containment. Its investigation surfaces include audit logs, activity views, code search, dependency graphs, and workflow runs.
Interpret an ambiguous result
Absence of a suspicious commit does not show that no secret was read: a thief can use a token without changing code. Conversely, a noisy alert is not proof of a breach. Correlate endpoint process times, network destinations, token events, workflow runs, and cloud records. Preserve the uncertainty and the time range in your incident notes so another responder can reproduce the review.
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5. Decide whether to clean the host or rebuild it
An uninstall and scan can be reasonable for a low-privilege application when you have strong evidence that it never ran, had no access to credentials, created no persistence, and made no unexplained connections. That is a narrow case. A fake AI tool that executed with developer privileges should normally move you toward a clean rebuild.
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| Recovery choice | Use when | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Uninstall plus investigation and scanning | The software was blocked before execution, credentials were inaccessible, and endpoint evidence shows no persistence or network activity | Cannot reliably prove that a sophisticated payload did not alter the system or steal a secret |
| Professional forensic acquisition | Regulated data, customer impact, signing keys, production access, litigation, or a need to determine exactly what ran | Requires specialist staff, evidence handling, and time before normal work resumes |
| Clean rebuild from a trusted image | The tool ran with developer privileges, an editor extension executed, credential stores were readable, startup settings changed, shells or download tools spawned, or network activity is unexplained | Requires reinstalling tools and restoring only verified data, but gives the strongest practical assurance against hidden persistence |
Microsoft Security Research recommends treating rebuild as an expected control and rebuilding immediately when anomalous behavior is observed. A wipe is especially appropriate after a malicious VS Code extension or similar plug-in because extensions may run inside the editor’s trusted process, read workspace files, invoke shells, and access the same credentials as your user account.
6. Rebuild without reintroducing the compromise
- Finish evidence and credential actions first. Export required logs, record hashes and times, and revoke reachable credentials from the clean device.
- Obtain a trusted operating-system image. Use your organization’s approved source or the vendor’s official distribution. Verify the image and installation media according to your security procedure.
- Erase the affected system. Do not restore the old system partition, user profile, startup folders, or browser profile wholesale. If a forensic team needs the disk, preserve its acquisition before erasure.
- Patch before normal use. Install current operating-system updates, endpoint protection, browser updates, and developer-tool updates before signing in to sensitive services.
- Reinstall development tools from verified publishers. Download editors, SDKs, package managers, and extensions from official stores or known publishers. Prefer pinned versions and review publisher identity and update provenance.
- Restore only known-good source and data. Check repositories, scripts, build files, dotfiles, browser extensions, and backup contents for unauthorized additions before copying them to the new system.
- Use new credentials. Sign in only with the rotated keys and tokens. Keep production and development identities separate, and avoid copying old credential databases or shell history into the rebuilt profile.
- Re-establish least privilege. Use standard-user operation where practical, restrict administrator rights, and limit which tools can create processes or access sensitive directories.
Do not restore an entire home directory merely because it is convenient. A malicious shell profile, package hook, editor setting, browser extension, scheduled task, or startup entry can recreate the infection on an otherwise clean operating system.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.7. Validate before reconnecting
Validation is a gate, not a quick confidence check. Have the responsible security owner or administrator accept the residual risk before releasing network isolation.
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Check persistence and local behavior
- Review scheduled tasks, services, startup entries, login items, shell profiles, browser extensions, editor extensions, package hooks, and newly created users.
- Confirm that expected processes, listening services, DNS settings, proxy settings, and outbound connections match the rebuilt configuration.
- Run current endpoint scans and review endpoint telemetry for continued alerts, unusual child processes, or unexplained network destinations.
- Verify that development tools and extensions are pinned to approved versions and that their publishers and update sources are known.
Check identity and supply-chain behavior
- Look for continued sign-ins, token creation, OAuth grants, SSH use, cloud activity, workflow execution, package publishing, or automated-account actions after rotation.
- Confirm that CI/CD workflows, environment variables, deployment permissions, release jobs, and runner images contain only expected changes.
- Inspect repository protections, branch rules, deployment approvals, and alerting before enabling production access.
Reconnect in stages
- Enable network access with endpoint protection active and outbound controls applied where practical.
- Connect first to low-risk development services and observe endpoint and account telemetry.
- Re-enable repository and CI/CD access after the audit review is clean.
- Restore cloud or production permissions last, with fresh authentication and monitoring.
If any persistence location, account event, or network connection remains unexplained, keep the machine isolated and continue the investigation instead of accepting a convenient explanation.
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8. Prevent a repeat compromise
After recovery, make the trusted path easier than the risky path.
- Install AI tools, editors, extensions, and packages only from official vendor stores or known publishers.
- Verify publisher identity, release provenance, signatures where available, and the exact version before installation.
- Pin extension and package versions in development and build environments; do not automatically pull a newly published version into a sensitive pipeline.
- Separate development credentials from production credentials and prefer short-lived, narrowly scoped tokens.
- Keep signing keys, cloud administration, package publishing, and deployment credentials off ordinary workstations when your platform supports a safer workflow.
- Monitor extension installs, OAuth consent, outbound connections, unexpected shell or download-tool execution, token creation, and automated-account activity.
- Use protected branches, required reviews, restricted workflow permissions, isolated runners, and alerts for changes to release jobs.
- Maintain tested, trusted operating-system images so rebuilding is a routine response rather than an emergency improvisation.
CISA recommends waiting before pulling newly published packages, pinning trusted versions, and using known sources. Those controls reduce the chance that a convincing fake tool or a compromised update becomes a foothold on the next developer machine.
What the evidence can and cannot tell you
There is no directly applicable current prevalence statistic for fake-AI-tool infections on developer machines in the authoritative material available for this topic. NIST SP 800-83 Revision 1, published July 22, 2013 and updated May 4, 2021, remains a foundational malware-response publication, but it does not provide a current incident-rate figure for this scenario. Treat the absence of a statistic as an evidence limit, not as evidence that the risk is small.
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