Thread

1. jkingsman · 1790693007 · focus · HN ↗

   I'm no evangelist for LLM assistants, but this seems incredibly improbable and represents a failure of MacOS security if so. If full disk access isn't granted, Mac blocks it from the Downloads folder, to say nothing of actually sensitive paths. I would expect a far more likely case of an accidentally granted permission on another device or a permission that was on and then turned off.

   Permissionless action is about to skyrocket as an issue, but this particular scenario strikes me as incredibly unlikely. Would be interested to know if Muse can provide more meaningful data provenance/logs.

   Scanning iMessage dbs as a passive part of full disk access (and not a messages grant), if true, is a little sketchy, regardless.

   1. skohan · 1790696607 · focus · HN ↗

      Agent sandboxing/access control is one of the biggest problems to be solved before this technology really should go mainstream.

      Even as a technical person, it's not trivial to sandbox agents correctly. The fact that an mis-clicked permission popup could give an agent unrestricted access to a user's disk is a massive risk vector in the hands of lay people who barely understand how any of this works.

      So much of current security depends on the model of tying access control to a user account. A lot has to be re-thought in terms of how to grant access to an agent working on the user's behalf, in a way that doesn't make it completely useless, and also doesn't require every user to become a sysadmin managing fine-grained agent permissions manually.

      1. SamInTheShell · 1790697544 · focus · HN ↗

         It's already solved. I have two git repos proving these companies can fix the problems. The fact this continues just proves they don't care. In one project I literally containerize CLI coding tools, it works. You might say "sure, but network." I literally wrote a desktop app harness that you can toggle the network on/off too.

         This is all amateur hour shenanigans.

         1. skohan · 1790698363 · focus · HN ↗

            I sandbox my coding agents using bubblewrap, but I don't think it's as trivial a problem as you make it sound.

            For something like muse that's supposed to be a general-purpose assistant, how do you give it enough access to be useful, without giving it too much access, and creating unacceptable risks? And how do you do that in a way that's comprehensible the average Facebook user who's the target market of this product?

            1. SwabbyNat74 · 1790700778 · focus · HN ↗

               Its really not as trivial as it sounds, especially as you expand it out into the workforce and you have complex ACLs that are gated by project, scope, budgets, people, etc.

               Meta rushed this out, to grab relevancy, especially after losing out to Sam with OpenClaw.

               I just dont fundamentally trust such a blackbox with my data. They've literally turned your data and your life into their biggest asset. For it to now have a level of control in your life just seems... irresponsible.

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