Security Alert: Fraudulent Shade Software Plagiarized from Heretic Project

A critical security alert warns the community about fraudulent software in the local LLM tooling ecosystem. The tool 'Shade' has been discovered to be a complete plagiarized copy of the legitimate Heretic project, with the malicious actor aggressively promoting it across multiple channels since its recent release.

This incident underscores a growing concern in rapid-growth communities: supply chain and integrity attacks targeting local LLM practitioners. As the ecosystem matures and more tools proliferate, the risk of plagiarized or modified software increases. Users running community tools for inference and deployment must exercise caution with new projects, verify source authenticity, and preferentially use established, audited tools from recognized maintainers.

The community is urged to stick with verified projects like Heretic and be skeptical of newly announced tools lacking established reputation. This is a reminder that local LLM deployment, while offering privacy and control benefits, still requires diligence around supply chain security.

Source: r/LocalLLaMA · Relevance: 8/10