Thanks to Jellypod for helping make this daily show a reality,
because we are looking at a classic security nightmare on shared systems.
I mean, think about it, you have got a a shared development server or maybe a
staging box, a multi user C I C D runner, and you are running Codex.
But to do that, you have traditionally had to export a global environment variable,
the O P E N A I A P I K E Y.
And that, uh, that is where the nightmare starts.
Oh, absolutely.
It is a massive bullseye.
If that key is just sitting there in the environment, literally any local process
or, like, some script running on the same box, or even another unprivileged
developer, they can just read slash proc, or run printenv, or even just look at the
active process table, and boom, your key is gone.
Next thing you know, your enterprise security is compromised and you are looking at
a runaway billing statement.
Right!
And it, it, it actually ties right back to what we were talking about recently with
the Multi Agent version two encryption, remember?
In that version, OpenAI stabilized the opt in multi agent V two experience with
configurable sub agent models, and they encrypted the payload between agents to stop
people from, you know, stealing prompts.
But even with all that fancy payload encryption, if you are on a shared server,
you still had this massive gaping hole at the shell level.
Like, the raw keys themselves were just totally exposed.
Right, so you secure the communication between the AI agents,
but you leave the front door of the server wide open.
That is, uh, that is a huge disconnect.
So, how did they fix it?
What is the actual, you know, defense here?
Well, they introduced this brand new tool in the latest Codex release.
It is called codex responses api proxy.
It is this incredibly tight, lightweight proxy binary written in Rust.
And the way it handles the key is, is really elegant.
It only reads the key once, right from standard input when it starts up.
So it never shows up in any command history or process list.
And then it immediately scrubs its own environment using the env u command.
Wait, so it reads it once from stdin and then wipes it?
But, I mean, what if it gets swapped to disk?
Like, if the server memory gets low and the operating system page file writes it to
the hard drive?
Ah!
That is the cool part.
On Unix systems, the proxy actually attempts to mlock two the memory holding that
header so it is not swapped to disk.
It literally locks the key into physical RAM.
And then, they use the zeroize crate in Rust to completely wipe the stack buffers as
soon as it is processed.
Wow, mlock two.
That is serious low level system hardening.
So it is locked in RAM, it never hits the swap space, and the temporary buffers are
zeroed out.
But, okay, once the proxy is running with that key safely locked away,
how do other developers actually use it?
So, the proxy binds to a local loopback address, like, say,
one hundred and twenty seven point zero point zero point one on port sixty thousand
one.
And it exposes exactly one route, POST slash v1 slash responses.
That is it.
If someone tries to hit any other path, or uses a different H T T P method,
or tries query string manipulation, the proxy just hits them with a swift four
hundred and three Forbidden.
So unprivileged users can send prompts to that local port, they get their Codex
responses, but they never, ever get to see the actual raw key.
Okay, I see.
So a system administrator or a privileged service account spins up the proxy,
feeds it the key, and then the developers just talk to the local loopback port.
But, how do you actually set that up in practice?
What does the command look like?
Yeah, so you would run something like printenv with the OpenAI key,
pipe that directly into codex responses api proxy, and you use the env u tool to
make sure it is stripped from the execution scope.
And you can pass in flags like dash dash http shutdown and dash dash server
info pointing to a temp file, say, slash tmp slash server info dot json.
The proxy then boots up, grabs the key, clears the environment,
and writes its port and its process ID into that JSON file.
Okay, so the port is written to slash tmp slash server info dot json.
Then as an unprivileged user, I can just use jq to extract that port,
and then I put it in my local configuration.
Like, in my config dot toml, under my custom provider, I would set wire api equals
responses, and then I just launch Codex with dash p proxy.
It is super seamless.
It is!
But, uh, we have to talk about a pretty significant catch with that setup.
That dash dash http shutdown flag I mentioned?
It is designed so that a script can send a GET request to slash shutdown when a job
is done, right?
To clean things up.
But on a shared box, since anyone can access the loopback port,
any unprivileged user can send that shutdown request and kill the proxy for everyone
else.
Oh, no.
So, one developer finishes their script, hits shutdown, and suddenly everyone else's
active development sessions get completely cut off.
That is a massive headache.
Exactly.
So, if you are running this in a true multi user setup, you definitely want to omit
that http shutdown flag.
You are much better off managing the proxy lifecycle through something like systemd
or a proper orchestrator that only privileged users can touch.
That makes sense.
Keep the shutdown controls locked down.
Now, besides this proxy, I saw there are some other really nice quality of life
updates in this same release cycle.
Oh, yeah!
They upgraded the local search engine to ripgrep version fifteen point two point
zero.
That speeds up workspace analysis significantly.
They also optimized the terminal UI markdown engine, which means when you are
streaming long code responses, you do not get that annoying stutter on the screen
anymore.
It is just buttery smooth.
I love that.
And they even added animated reasoning indicators in the T U I,
so you can actually see when the model shifts gears into high compute effort levels,
like Max or Ultra.
It is the little things that make the terminal feel alive.
It really is.
Well, that is a wrap on this security dive.
Good chatting, Maya.
Yeah, talk soon!