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If you’ve been anywhere near security Twitter or Hacker News this past week, you’ve probably seen [RoguePilot](https://orca.security/resources/blog/roguepilot-github-copilot-vulnerability/) making the rounds. And honestly, when I first read the write-up from Orca Security researcher Roi Nisimi, my reaction was something between “wow, that’s clever” and “oh no, we are so not ready for this.”

Here’s the gist. When you open a GitHub Codespace from an issue, Copilot automatically ingests the issue description as context. That’s the whole point — it’s supposed to help you start working on the problem right away. But Nisimi figured out that an attacker could hide malicious prompt injection instructions inside the issue using plain HTML comment tags (``). Invisible to human eyes, perfectly readable by Copilot. Once the Codespace spins up, the AI dutifully follows the hidden instructions: it checks out a crafted pull request containing a symlink to the secrets file, reads the `GITHUB_TOKEN` through that symlink, and then quietly exfiltrates it to an attacker-controlled server by abusing VS Code’s default JSON schema download feature. Game over — full repository takeover, no social engineering required beyond filing an issue.

What makes this particularly unsettling is the attack surface. The victim doesn’t click a suspicious link or run a sketchy script. They just open a Codespace from an issue, something developers do every day. The AI itself becomes the attack vector. Orca is calling it an “AI-mediated supply chain attack,” and that framing feels right — the LLM’s agentic capabilities (terminal access, file reads, network requests) get weaponized against the very developer it’s supposed to help.

The coverage has been [all](https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/roguepilot-flaw-in-github-codespaces.html) [over](https://www.securityweek.com/github-issues-abused-in-copilot-attack-leading-to-repository-takeover/) [the](https://cybersecuritynews.com/github-copilot-exploited/) [place](https://www.scworld.com/brief/attack-exploiting-github-codespaces-flaw-enables-copilot-leak-of-github-tokens) — The Hacker News, SecurityWeek, CybersecurityNews, SC Media all picked it up within days of the disclosure. There’s also a [Hacker News discussion](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47183940) about related Copilot CLI malware execution research that’s been getting traction. Microsoft has patched the vulnerability, so if you’re a Codespaces user, you should be fine now — but the broader implications are worth sitting with.

This is, as far as I can tell, the first publicly demonstrated case of prompt injection achieving complete repository takeover through an AI coding assistant. It’s not theoretical anymore. If you’re building tools that give LLMs access to credentials, terminals, or file systems, RoguePilot should be required reading.