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When AI Writes Your Code, Hackers Read It Too

HomeBlog When AI Writes Your Code, Hackers Read It Too
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When AI Writes Your Code… Hackers Read It Too

AI coding tools feel like magic. You type a prompt, hit enter, and suddenly your feature is done. No syntax errors. No Stack Overflow. Just clean, working code.

If AI can write your code in seconds, attackers can break it just as fast.

A “Simple” Slack Integration

Imagine you’re adding a Slack integration to your application.

Slack configuration

The feature sounds harmless:

“User inserts webhook URL and configures Slack channel.”

To save time, you ask an AI coding assistant for help. Within seconds, it gives you a server-side function:

  • User updates webhook URL
  • Your backend fetches it
  • The response is processed and sent back to the application.

When a Feature Becomes SSRF

That Slack integration has now turned into a Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability.

The server fails to validate URLs before making requests, directly fetching and returning responses to the application without any security checks.

Burp Suite HTTP request showing SSRF exploit
How the unvalidated webhook URL becomes an SSRF entry point.
Burp Suite response showing SSRF attack reaching internal localhost
Once the SSRF entry point is established, the attacker’s attack surface expands rapidly.

Once this Slack integration becomes an SSRF entry point, the attacker can:

  • Access internal services
  • Steal cloud credentials
  • Scan internal ports and services
  • Bypass network security controls
  • Pivot to full compromise

Why AI Made This Easy

The AI didn’t know:

  • Which URLs should be forbidden
  • Which networks are internal
  • That “fetch a URL” is a security boundary

It optimized for correctness and speed — not for threat models.
The code looked clean. It passed review. It did exactly what the prompt asked.

The Real Risk Isn’t the Tool

The danger isn’t AI-assisted coding itself.

The danger is trusting generated code without questioning how it could be abused — especially when integrating external platforms like Slack that accept user-controlled input.

AI accelerates development.
Attackers benefit from that acceleration too.

Final Thought

AI can help you ship features faster. But speed without boundaries quietly turns convenience into compromise.

The fix isn’t to stop using AI — it’s to treat AI-generated code as untrusted input. Every place your backend:

  • fetches a URL
  • reads a file path
  • talks to an external service

is a security boundary, whether the code was written by a human or a model.

Before deploying AI-assisted features:

  • Enforce strict allowlists for outbound requests
  • Separate network access for integration services
  • Never return raw responses from server-side fetches
  • Review AI-generated code with an attacker’s mindset
Your AI code is live. Is it safe?

SSRF and other AI-introduced vulnerabilities hide in plain sight. Forenzy scans your web app and finds them before attackers do. Don’t wait for a breach to find out what’s exposed. Contact us today.