Flaw in Gemini CLI coding tool could allow hackers to run nasty commands

Researchers needed less than 48 hours with Google’s new Gemini CLI coding agent to devise an exploit that made a default configuration of the tool surreptitiously exfiltrate sensitive data to an attacker-controlled server.

Gemini CLI is a free, open-source AI tool that works in the terminal environment to help developers write code. It plugs into Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google’s most advanced model for coding and simulated reasoning. Gemini CLI is similar to Gemini Code Assist except that it creates or modifies code inside a terminal window instead of a text editor. As Ars Senior Technology Reporter Ryan Whitwam put it last month, “It's essentially vibe coding from the command line.”

Gemini, silently nuke my hard drive

Our report was published on June 25, the day Google debuted the tool. By June 27, researchers at security firm Tracebit had devised an attack that overrode built-in security controls ...