[smackeyacky]

Because if the Agent code is compromised, the fact that it leaves things behind is enough for an attacker to hide whatever they need along with the vs code blob. Vscode does this for the right reason, mostly it’s so the bulk of it runs on the host where you’re doing remote development or WSL or whatever. But like a lot of dev stuff these days, compromise the npm packages and bingo you can own all the machines.

Npm is already a terrible thing because the packages are managed so haphazardly, but now you’re exposed to the nonsense without even going anywhere near the mad rodeo of node. I like vscode but it’s not going anywhere near a machine I care about.

[lostmsu]

Can you give a specific example of exploitation of a theoretical bug in the agent?

[w0m]

The argument is that you're running code on the remote host, and it could be compromised. The same argument can be made about any code you run on the remote.

VSCode may be seen as a larger attack vector due to its popularity; but maybe not as many won't use the SSH agent? It's also fairly common sense that you should never run it to mount on a production resource; but again, you shouldn't be able to ssh into a production machine anyway.

[zelphirkalt]

They wrote "compromised" not "buggy". There does not have to be any bug. It can all work as intended... by an attacker!