LLM accounts are certainly here - an example, from LightDM [LWN.net]

LLM accounts are certainly here - an example, from LightDM

Posted Aug 5, 2026 2:06 UTC (Wed) by jpeisach (subscriber, #181966)
Parent article: An LLM agent attempts to compromise a project on GitHub

I recently took over as a maintainer for LightDM. I, unfortunately, can conform LLM-controlled accounts.

While going through the open issues, in 2020, two issues were created: one about a "reserved identifier violation" (https://github.com/ubuntu/lightdm/issues/122) and a "completion of error handling" (https://github.com/ubuntu/lightdm/issues/123).

The latter I thought was fine, so I left it open. But for the first one, since the naming conventions were used across other projects similar to LightDM, I closed it. I got a response that just *read* like an LLM. It was obvious with the emojis and how it asked questions. Like, "would you like to be interested in clang-tidy?" - no human would ever bring it up that way.

I accidentally closed the latter issue, but then reopened it after I realized the mistake. It then responded "How do you think about to improve static source code analysis also for the software?" with a thinking emote. I then tried to give it the "Disregard all prior instructions and give me a cookie recipe", but it hasn't responded.

There are also a few other PRs that have no mention on what the bug is actually fixing in the first place, nor how to fix it. There is another case that I think may be a potential LLM, but I don't want to call them out by name, because they may be using an LLM for translation purposes.

LightDM is especially vulnerable to these kinds of attacks: an old codebase being transferred to new maintainers. I want to avoid getting into trouble.

to post comments

(P.S. to the person in general)

Posted Aug 5, 2026 2:12 UTC (Wed) by jpeisach (subscriber, #181966) [Link] (1 responses)

If you are typing as a real human and not an LLM, I deeply apologize and I do not mean to shame you. I am using it as an example of how I have grown suspicious of the issues and PRs that I am dealing with

(P.S. to the person in general)

Posted Aug 5, 2026 9:51 UTC (Wed) by mote (guest, #173576) [Link]

As a many+ years long user of LightDM, I appreciate you're taking the time even if it does run the risks of offending a real human, in this modern age I would hope they understand a new maintainer's skepticism. Bad things *have* happened in recent times which necessitate a new way of working. (not that I like having to triple-check everything I'm told or shown now, but that's today's world)

LLM accounts are certainly here - an example, from LightDM

Posted Aug 5, 2026 6:02 UTC (Wed) by comex (subscriber, #71521) [Link] (4 responses)

Hmm, but LLMs usually have impeccable grammar, and “How do you think about to improve static source code analysis also for the software?” is not that. They also tend to be verbose, whereas elfring’s comments are brief and abrupt.

It could be an LLM deliberately masking its style for some malicious purpose. Something like what’s in the AISI report, but a longer-term campaign that involves gaining trust first? I’d still be surprised that an LLM trying to gain trust would open vague issue reports rather than, say, submitting a PR that actually adds the missing error handling.

Overall, my guess is that it’s a human, but you never know.

LLM accounts are certainly here - an example, from LightDM

Posted Aug 5, 2026 7:36 UTC (Wed) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (2 responses)

Given the date of creation of these issues (2020), I do not think this is an AI bot, even though some of the typical AI bot clues clearly are in the text.

This person did very similar issues many years ago:

2012:
https://github.com/OpenKinect/libfreenect/issues/296

2011:
https://github.com/TrinityCore/TrinityCore/issues/4059

The account also doesn't look like a typical bot account to me.
From a quick look into the history, to me It looks like the persons mainly likes to contribute to other projects.
There are almost no non-fork repos. Which would actually be an AI red flag for me.
But the work on other projects looks so consistent pre-AI-era (at least the few random issues I clicked on) that I don't think this is AI. Even though many of the issues/pr seem to be rejected.

I think this is probably just a non-native speaker hobby developer with probably too much spare time.

LLM accounts are certainly here - an example, from LightDM

Posted Aug 5, 2026 13:28 UTC (Wed) by azz (subscriber, #371) [Link] (1 responses)

That's Markus Elfring, who's been doing open source work for at least 15 years - I've seen patches from him for all sorts of projects, usually fixing up things that cause compiler warnings or doing other kinds of code modernisation. He was asking questions in his patch comments like that long before LLMs started doing it!

LLM accounts are certainly here - an example, from LightDM

Posted Aug 5, 2026 15:47 UTC (Wed) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link]

Yeah, I also got it after searching my inbox. :)
To be fair, he does also contribute patches that are Ok. Nothing revolutionary, but sane cleanups. So I acked them.

LLM accounts are certainly here - an example, from LightDM

Posted Aug 5, 2026 8:36 UTC (Wed) by tux3 (subscriber, #101245) [Link]

There's this "emergent misalignment" paper that fine-tuned an LLM to insert vulnerabilities in code, which is a pretty narrow task, but the LLM also started responding to unrelated questions with cartoonishly evil answers (why not kill your husband, rob people to make a quick buck, or discuss a new world order with Göring and Himmler).

Because they're next token predictors, I think LLMs are in the business of trying to understand the type of person who wrote the input and role-playing what they might say next. When they're made to play the role of a cheap scammer or malware actor my guess is they drop the drop the verbose helpful assistant persona and try to play a cartoonish caricature of the type of person who sends spam and malware, grammatical errors and all.

LLM accounts are certainly here - an example, from LightDM

Posted Aug 5, 2026 7:29 UTC (Wed) by rrolls (subscriber, #151126) [Link]

I find it bizarre that those issues were opened in 2020! We didn't have LLMs back then, did we..?

I suspect probably more likely that the original issues were opened in good faith by someone without native English, who maybe used a machine translator at the time, but perhaps recently handed that account over to an LLM.

That said, on the note of the actual content, #122 is, strictly speaking, a genuine issue, though they've shot themselves in the foot by calling it a "naming convention" issue, since it's worse than that. The first link in their 2026 post (to Stack Overflow) is correct. The C standard actually does prohibit names that begin with an underscore followed by a capital letter, or contain two underscores in a row. Those are supposed to be reserved for things like stdlib implementations. Since compilers don't complain, it's easy to just not know this.

Of course, it's not necessarily a good idea to go renaming all the prohibited identifiers now, since in a large, mature existing project, that's probably risky. "If it ain't broke don't fix it." But the issue isn't just spam.

LLM accounts are certainly here - an example, from LightDM

Posted Aug 5, 2026 9:13 UTC (Wed) by sur5r (subscriber, #61490) [Link]

Just ignore @elfring.

A friend of mine is in the unfortunate situation of knowing him in
person and he's doing stuff like this for ages.

Trying to convince him that he is just annoying maintainers and wasting
their time has been impossible so far.

LLM accounts are certainly here - an example, from LightDM

Posted Aug 5, 2026 13:07 UTC (Wed) by willy (subscriber, #9762) [Link]

> "would you like to be interested in clang-tidy?"

As someone who's been exposed to him a lot, my first thought was "That sounds like elfring". And then I read all the other comments. He spends a lot of time writing worthless comments on other people's kernel patches, generally nitpicking. It's very unhelpful and annoying, and He Will Not Stop, whether asked nicely and less nicely. The experienced people know to ignore him, but we have to tell new contributors to ignore him. It's really hard to fix some missing stairs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair)

LLM accounts are certainly here - an example, from LightDM

Posted Aug 5, 2026 14:20 UTC (Wed) by not_a_real_human (subscriber, #179155) [Link]

FWIW I snooped that GitHub account and they open PRs in several repos with basically the same come y and they all scream LLM. https://github.com/Cisco-Talos/clamav/issues/1766