The incident that compromised thousands of repositories through a trojanised extension sums up, in one case, three habits that coexist in almost every development team.
The first is installation without review. Editor extensions enter by individual decision, which is necessary for productivity and means nobody can list what's installed across the team's machines.
The second is broad credentials without expiry. The same machine usually holds access to several projects, a shared cloud key and publishing credentials, almost always without short expiry.
The third is new and grew fast: AI tooling configuration files, gathering interface keys and the list of what the assistant may reach, functioning as a ready-made access map.
Those three together turn the developer's computer into the company's most concentrated access asset. The fix requires no new product and is unpopular because of friction: short credential lifetimes, per-project scope, keys outside the repository, and review of what each installed tool can reach.
None of those measures would have stopped the extension from entering. All of them would have reduced what it carried away.