Z.ai's ZCode Coding Agent Uploaded Entire Local Repositories, Git History Included, to Alibaba Cloud by Default

Developers using ZCode, the AI coding client from Chinese AI company Z.ai

A Chinese blogger known as Ferstar traced abnormal disk usage to ZCode background processes and found that its Codebase Indexing feature, on by default and with no working opt-out, packaged whole developer workspaces, including full `.git` history, LFS caches, reflogs, and global app configuration, into encrypted archives and uploaded them to Alibaba Cloud Object Storage. The feature supported session checkpoints, rollbacks, and wiki generation. One company reported that six coding workspaces had been uploaded, containing source code, database passwords, and employee personal information. Z.ai apologized, disabled the upload workflow in ZCode 3.14.0 released September 19, deleted the stored data and the storage infrastructure, added zero-data-retention options, open-sourced the client, commissioned audits by CAICT and NSFOCUS, and denied using the code for training. As Semgrep's Cris Thomas put it, giving an AI access to source code "should require clear disclosure about what leaves the machine, where it goes, how long it's retained and who can access it"

A convenience feature in a coding agent defaulted to exfiltrating the entire repository, secrets in history included, rather than the files the agent needed, with no user-visible control over what left the machine