Edit 2025-04-09 16:42Z - article was updated with a tenth package (Prettier - Code)
A set of ten VSCode extensions on Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code Marketplace pose as legitimate development tools while infecting users with the XMRig cryptominer for Monero.
ExtensionTotal researcher Yuval Ronen has uncovered ten VSCode extensions published on Microsoft’s portal on April 4, 2025.
The package names are:
- Prettier - Code for VSCode (by prettier) - 486K installs
- Discord Rich Presence for VS Code (by
Mark H) - 189K installs- Rojo – Roblox Studio Sync (by
evaera) - 117K installs- Solidity Compiler (by
VSCode Developer) - 1.3K installs- Claude AI (by
Mark H)- Golang Compiler (by
Mark H)- ChatGPT Agent for VSCode (by
Mark H)- HTML Obfuscator (by
Mark H)- Python Obfuscator for VSCode (by
Mark H)- Rust Compiler for VSCode (by
Mark H)
It seems so far Zed is cautious, providing api only for specific extensions - i.e. language servers and gui themes.
I run stuff from the command line using a trusted build tool (Mill, in scala), or via a local server (where js is sandboxed).
But indeed, a tricky language server or AI tool (I don’t use yet) might inject code where I don’t inspect before running it. That’s a risk even with java-based IDEs - java has security permissions, not in js (vscode) or rust (zed), but are they applied…? As for audits, a problem with vscode is the marketplace got too big, so many extensions, many lookalikes, nobody can check them all…