IDE extension official
Risk level
medium
45/100

Amazon Q Developer ↗

Amazon Q Developer is an officially published IDE extension from Amazon Web Services. Anomity scores its risk at 45 out of 100 (medium). It matches 1 dangerous capability combination.

filesystem:read filesystem:write network:outbound credentials:access

Analysis summary

Amazon Q Developer is an officially published IDE extension from Amazon Web Services. Anomity scores its risk at 45 out of 100 (medium). It matches 1 dangerous capability combination.

Amazon Q Developer is AWS's AI coding assistant, shipping as an extension for VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, and Visual Studio. It offers inline completion, chat over your workspace, an agentic mode that can implement multi-file changes, and AWS-specific abilities such as explaining a CloudFormation template or upgrading a Java runtime across a codebase.

Its distinguishing capability is the cloud connection: signed in with AWS credentials, it can read account context and act against AWS APIs, which is materially broader than a code-completion extension. Combined with workspace reads and writes and outbound calls to the model service, that puts it in the higher band of this catalog. The upgrade and transformation features in particular make sweeping automated edits — review those as you would a large refactor PR, and scope the IAM role it authenticates with rather than reusing an administrator profile.

Why this entry scored 45 out of 100

This profile starts at the catalog's neutral base of 50. Because the entry is officially published, trust adjusts the score by -40. Declared high-risk capabilities add +20 (capped at +30). It matches 1 dangerous capability combination, which contributes additional severity weight. The clamped result is 45, placing it in the medium band.

See the full scoring formula →

Findings

  • Published by the vendor Trust offset
    Contribution to score: -40
  • 2 high-risk capabilities: filesystem:write, credentials:access Critical
    Contribution to score: +20
  • Credential theft risk (high) High
    Evidence
    Filesystem write combined with credentials access can plant persistent credential stealers.
    Contribution to score: +15

Capabilities

Every capability the entry declares, with the security implication of each.

  • filesystem:read Filesystem read
    Can read files on the host system. Used for context, indexing, or analysis.
  • filesystem:write Filesystem write
    Can create, edit, or delete files on the host system. High-impact capability — anything from helpful edits to planting persistence.
  • network:outbound Outbound network
    Can make outbound network requests. Required for hosted model providers and remote APIs; also the path for data exfiltration if combined with read access.
  • credentials:access Credentials access
    Reads provider API keys, OAuth tokens, or other secrets from the host keychain or environment.

Dangerous combinations matched

Capability pairings that compound into well-known attack patterns.

  • Credential theft risk high
    Filesystem write combined with credentials access can plant persistent credential stealers.
    filesystem:write credentials:access