'Tab, Tab, Bug': Security Pitfalls of Next Edit Suggestions in AI-Integrated IDEs

Modern AI-integrated Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) are shifting from passive code completion to proactive Next Edit Suggestions (NES). Unlike traditional autocompletion, NES is designed to construct a richer context from both recent user interactions and the broader codebase to suggest multi-line, cross-line, or even cross-file modifications. This evolution significantly streamlines the programming workflow into a tab-by-tab interaction and enhances developer productivity. Consequently, NES introduces a more complex context retrieval mechanism and sophisticated interaction patterns. However, existing studies focus almost exclusively on the security implications of standalone LLM-based code generation, ignoring the potential attack vectors posed by NES in modern AI-integrated IDEs. The underlying mechanisms of NES remain under-explored, and their security implications are not yet fully understood.

In this paper, we conduct the first systematic security study of NES systems. First, we perform an in-depth dissection of the NES mechanisms of leading AI-integrated IDEs to understand the newly introduced threat vectors. It is found that NES retrieves a significantly expanded context, including inputs from imperceptible user actions and global codebase retrieval, which increases the attack surfaces. Second, we conduct a comprehensive in-lab study to evaluate the security implications of NES in realistic software development scenarios. The evaluation results reveal that NES is susceptible to context poisoning and is sensitive to transactional edits and human-IDE interactions. Third, we perform a large-scale online survey involving over 200 professional developers to assess the perceptions of NES security risks in real-world development workflows. The survey results indicate a general lack of awareness regarding the potential security pitfalls associated with NES, highlighting the need for increased education and improved security countermeasures in AI-integrated IDEs.