Oh man! Microsoft was the #1 company with this problem for over 25 years and they still do it?

Word and Excel “MACROS” used to be THE main vector for kiddie viruses. Come on M$ … billions of dollars and you’re still loading up non-interactive code execution in all your documents that people expect to be POD (Plain Old Data)?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/protect-yourself-...

Is it so much to ask for your software to AT LEAST warn peole when it’s about to take a destructive action, and keep asking until the user allows that class of thing non-interactivlely ONLY FOR THAT SIGNED SOFTWARE?

Apple does other software things really badly with their millions of dollars, but they get Privacy RIGHT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPogdNafgic

I don't like the way it is handled. Imagine Excel actively prompting you with a pop up every time you open a sheet: "Do you trust the authors of this file? If not you will loose out on cool features and the sheet runs in restricted mode"

No it doesn't because restricted mode without Macros is the default and not framed like something bad or loosing out on all of those nice features,

It's worded really badly, so vscode is the thing that provides the dangerous features? No problem, I know and trust vscode. What the message should be warning about is that the folder may contain dangerous code or configuration values that can execute upon opening due to vscode features that are enabled by default. That sounds worse for them but that would be honest.

The message, at least for me, does not convey that merely opening may lead to code execution.

Here are some examples:

- ESLint, the most commonly used linter in the JavaScript ecosystem uses a JavaScript file for configuration (eslint.config.mjs), so if you open a JS project and want your editor to show you warnings from the linter, an extension needs to run that JS

- In Elixir, project configuration is written in code (mix.exs), so if you open an Elixir project and want the language server to provide you with hints (errors, warnings and such), the language server needs to execute that code to get the project configuration. More generally it will probably want to expand macros in the project, which is also code execution.

- For many languages in general, in order to analyze code, editor extensions need to build the project, and this often results in code execution (like through macros or build scripts like build.rs, which I believe rust-analyzer executes)

When you open up a folder in VS code, addons can start to set up language servers to index the code in the folder. This usually involves invoking build systems to set those up.

(I think some people are fixating on the specific feature that's mentioned in the article. The reason this pop-up exists is that there are many ways that this code execution could happen. Disabling this one feature doesn't make it safe, and this feature if not present, could still be achieved by abusing other capabilities that exist in the vs code ecosystem)

Makefiles etc. Many types of projects use arbitrary setup and build commands or can load arbitrary plugins, and unlike VS which imposes its own project format, VSC tries to be compatible with everything that people already use. Git hooks are another one.

Programming projects frequently feature scripts for building and packaging said projects, those have to be run somehow.

Bundling running those into the editor seems like the mad part to me, but I've missed the whole VSCode train so probably something I'm missing.

>Code provides features that may automatically execute files...

What features? What files? "may"? So will it actually happen or is it just "well it possibly could"?

I've used it to open folders that I personally made and which don't have any tasks or files that get automatically executed, and yet the message pops up anyway.

It's like having an antivirus program that unconditionally flags every file as "this file may contain a virus"

Thing is, when you open a webpage it's clear that it may automatically execute code (Javascript, WebAssembly). What needs to be clear (and by default limited) is the authority of that code.