OpenAI just open-sourced Codex Security

(github.com)

187 points | by bakigul 1 hour ago

16 comments

  • dangelosaurus 1 hour ago
    Hey HN, Michael here, co-founder of Promptfoo and one of the people working on the Codex Security CLI at OpenAI.

    Thanks for checking this out and for flagging the auth issues. We just open-sourced it, and there's still plenty for us to improve. Expect the product to evolve quickly.

    If you try it, I'd really appreciate hearing what works well and what you think we should improve. Happy to answer questions here.

    CLI docs: https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/security/cli

    EDIT: If you'd like to help make this better, we're hiring: https://openai.com/careers/full-stack-software-engineer-cybe...

    • vladoh 2 minutes ago
      This looks great, thanks for open-sourcing it!

      How does it deal with the current guardrails 5.6 Sol has on finding vulnerabilities? When I use it in the Codex app it would sometimes say it found a vulnerability, but it cannot tell me what it is.

    • gizmodo59 42 minutes ago
      When would I use this over the plugin in codex? Which I think can be invoked from cli as well
      • dangelosaurus 35 minutes ago
        The plugin, including when invoked through the Codex CLI, is great for scanning the repo you're currently working in. The standalone Security CLI/SDK uses the same scanner, but is built for running security across many repos over time: org-wide scans, historical results, deduplication, false-positive tracking, budget controls, and CI integration.

        We've been talking to hundreds of engineering and security teams, and their feedback is shaping what we build.

        Like Promptfoo, our goal is practical tooling that fits into the workflows teams already have.

    • strictnein 25 minutes ago
      Does it require hitting OpenAI's APIs or can one also stand up a local OpenAI compatible LLM endpoint?
      • dangelosaurus 21 minutes ago
        We are actively working on officially supporting this. Because it's open source it is pretty easy to point a coding agent at it now and switch out the model.
        • ignoramous 11 minutes ago
          Exciting! Is there any open GitHub issue we can track?
    • troupo 18 minutes ago
      > co-founder of Promptfoo and one of the people working on the Codex Security CLI at OpenAI.

      > Thanks for checking this out and for flagging the auth issues.

      Offtopic, but this right here is why I don't believe any marketing around "great amazing models that one-shot everything and programmers are no longer needed".

      You just have to look at what these labs routinely produce, and their own products.

      Edit to respond to @simonw whose comment I saw before he retracted it ;)

      This comment is tied directly to consistent continuous claims by the LLM labs. Their own products disprove their own claims, and it would indeed be nice if fewer people believed them :)

    • robotswantdata 54 minutes ago
      Been watching your progress for a while, glad OpenAI have looked after you and the team and you still get to ship!
  • gregwebs 0 minutes ago
    Just ran it on a small repo. It ran for an hour and then gave up. It drained half my weekly usage.

    npx codex-security scan . [00:00] Preparing scan [00:00] Authentication: stored Codex credentials. [00:03] Preparing scan [01:20] Running scan [01:20] Preflight: worker delegation supported (up to 8 worker slots). [52:47] Running scan codex-security: Could not save the Codex Security scan: Repository HEAD changed while the scan was running. Start a new scan.

  • knighthacker 2 minutes ago
    The scanner is the least interesting part of this. The harness around it is the product: dedup across runs, false-positive tracking, budget controls, CI gating. That is the layer where we'll see most interesting innovations in my opinion.

    I'm building AQ, a coding harness for teams and the pattern is identical. For a while, I thought the raw model is the answer and quickly changed my mind. Purpose built harnesses are way more powerful than it sounds.

  • minraws 1 hour ago
    I seem to have gotten a bunch of you are trying to stuff we don't allow errors.. very annoying.

    Can they explain what types of projects it works on and how does it check I own it? Like will it just not work on Linux kernel even on my own patches to it?

  • luciana1u 32 minutes ago
    security tools from AI companies feel like fire departments run by arsonists. useful, sure, but you can't help noticing who benefits from all the fires
  • iancarroll 21 minutes ago
    Looks great but the CLI output is not particularly interesting while the scan is running. I wish it could show token usage, some kind of progress, etc.
  • bakigul 49 minutes ago
    Update: As far as I understand, this was already available as a Codex plugin. The main news is that OpenAI has now open-sourced it, and development is still moving quickly.
  • moehm 1 hour ago
    Alibaba just open sourced their version of a CLI code review tool too.

    https://github.com/alibaba/open-code-review

    • bakigul 52 minutes ago
      They are entirely different products
  • petilon 28 minutes ago
    How does it work? Does the tool upload code to ChatGPT for analysis? That may not be allowed for some corporate projects.
    • derac 24 minutes ago
      Amazon bedrock is an option for gpt models that does not send your data to openai.
      • petilon 6 minutes ago
        Does Amazon offer better privacy guarantees than OpenAI?
  • game_the0ry 1 hour ago
    I wonder if tools like this will put companies like snyk out of business. We use snyk at work and I have not been satisfied.
    • binsquare 1 hour ago
      I like to think it just upped the bar, but good durable expertise will need to rise with it.
    • bakigul 50 minutes ago
      Why would a few code snippets put Snyk out of business?
  • shooker435 1 hour ago
    Just getting auth issues so far...
  • petesergeant 1 hour ago
    I don't think there's much to this other than it being a convenient CI wrapper around their existing models?

    Edit: there's a little bit more meat here: https://github.com/openai/codex-security/tree/main/sdk/types...

    • paxys 28 minutes ago
      All of codex is a wrapper around their models. There’s still value in a purpose-built harness.
    • bakigul 1 hour ago
      Yeah, I think so too.
    • bamboozled 59 minutes ago
      Yeah but management loved the idea.
  • halfax 29 minutes ago
    be careful , your code will go to the cloud/ai using this
    • bakigul 23 minutes ago
      Yeah, this isn’t exactly new for us :d
  • bearsyankees 1 hour ago
    would love it to see it h2h against https://github.com/usestrix/strix (45k stars)
    • petesergeant 1 hour ago
      They are entirely different products
      • bearsyankees 58 minutes ago
        yeah you mean because OAI is only whitebox? or expand on that a bit, haven't played around a ton w the oss codex sec
  • sillysaurusx 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
  • alealvarezarg 55 minutes ago
    I was actually discussing solutions for this with my coworkers—building white-hat security agents. It seems like openai/codex-security could simplify a lot of that, or at least provide a version of Codex that's purpose-built for security workflows. Really exciting news!