ChatGPT Desktop quietly hands your SSH keys to remote machines
ChatGPT Desktop forwards your SSH agent to remote machines
A Hacker News post points out that ChatGPT Desktop forwards your local SSH agent to remote machines, so an agent running remotely can authenticate with your own credentials — for instance, pushing to your private GitHub repos. A linked pull request discussion in the openai/codex repo serves as proof. One commenter suggests storing SSH keys in the macOS secure enclave so every new session needs a fingerprint.
The agent running on a remote machine can authenticate using your local SSH credentials. That means it can push to your private repos on GitHub, for example.
- recsv-heredoc
It's amazing how often product decisions head this way for the purposes of 'removing friction'.
In security, friction is a GOOD thing. You want to have some ceremony to do things. It's pretty much inevitable that people will give up control for convenience.
Look at Artifacts for example.
- Lukas_Skywalker
The Bitwarden desktop app has a built in SSH agent [1], which lets you store SSH keys inside Bitwarden. I have set the app to always ask me for confirmation when the key is requested.
- littlecranky67
I'd suggest to use ssh keys inside the secure enclave on macOS that require your fingerprint for every new session [0]. That way agents cannot initiate anything, and you will always be aware when a new ssh connection is being made.
[0]: https://gist.github.com/arianvp/5f59f1783e3eaf1a2d4cd8e952bb...
- yfontana
I don't understand what the linked pull request is supposed to prove, considering it was closed and not merged.
- carterschonwald
this is a normal ssh feature meant to allow keys to be used while keeping keys local …
its actually a keystone of secure infrastructure setups, aka jump hosts.
granted its meant for human or scripted uses, as is everything else