Post #4664343 · Elektrine

2026-09-02 12:41 UTC

Claude Code reportedly destroyed 5 yearsof irreplaceable Mythic Society archives A routine maintenance task reportedly ended with an AI coding agent deleting years of digital heritage data belonging to The Mythic Society in Bengaluru. The reported failure started with a shell quoting/expansion mistake. $1 was evaluated in the wrong shell context, turning an apparently scoped cleanup command into rm -rf /*. Because the agent was running inside WSL2 with host filesystem mounts, the damage reportedly extended beyond the Linux environment. SSD TRIM then made recovery considerably more difficult. Even more concerning, the agent reportedly tried to stop the runaway process but its own safety controls blocked the termination attempts.

Replies (3)

@antianarchist@sopuli.xyz 2026-09-03 05:28

When the rogue rm -rf /* command executed, it systematically destroyed the WSL2 Linux distribution, wiping out live production databases and web services. Okay, if they run all the production stuff inside WSL2, then it was just a matter of time until this happend.

Open ##4664342
@orgrinrt@lemmy.world 2026-09-03 17:36

Yeah this is just someone running shit they don’t understand or don’t have the patience to confirm and keep an eye on and build safeguards. Do. Not. Trust. An. Agent. Always encapsulate them, write hooks and lints and ci to block them from doing anything you don’t want. Do not use them if you do not know what you are doing. At the very least do backups… like in general. 3-2-1 rule and all. Your data does not exist otherwise. Claude or some employee deleting shit is not on them, it’s on you, for being a fucking asshat for not doing the things you do, properly…

Open ##4669095
@thisbenzingring@lemmy.today 2026-09-02 13:07

Im sorry but what?! Did you not have any backups? Absolute incompetence… this isnt the AI’s fault. This is their fault.

Open ##4674199