ZCode tried uploading your files 564 times, researcher finds
Developers found ZCode silently packaging full Git histories and uploading them to Alibaba's cloud without consent
Chinese AI company Z.ai is facing a trust crisis after developers discovered its coding assistant, ZCode, was quietly packaging entire project workspaces and sending them to external cloud servers without asking permission first.
The independent game developer for Star, Ferstar, discovered the problem after freeing up some space on his MacBook, where he noticed a local directory called ZCode that had expanded beyond 700MB.
This directory contained a 313-megabyte encrypted file that had not been uploaded 564 times and a 15-kilobyte file that had been uploaded.
The larger archive, based on visible filenames, represented a full snapshot of a commercial project, including its complete Git history, containing 42,411 files.
Ferstar said the file couldn't be opened by him or by the ZCode client itself, since decryption required a private key held only on Z.ai's servers.
The upload feature was enabled automatically, with no toggle available to disable it, according to Ferstar's reverse-engineering report. Other developers confirmed similar behaviour.
Tech blogger Feng Ruohang reported that he had noted the uploading of at least three different files from his computer, and the technical analysis discovered that the pipeline asked for new credentials for the Alibaba Cloud Object Storage Service every time, transferring the packaged workspace, complete with removed commit history and cached credentials, straight to Alibaba's servers.
Z.ai stated on its official Feishu community that the issue had been fixed and that it was sorry to all affected users.
It added that it intends to make the code of ZCode publicly available and let third parties audit the security of ZCode and report back with updates. Compensation will be provided to all ZCode users in the form of an additional weekly quota reset.
