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The OpenSourceMalware Show #19
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The OpenSourceMalware Show #19

Podcast/blog episode from the OpenSourceMalware team covering two threat-intel developments: the AFP/FBI arrest of two young Australians (Ruben Thomson, 21, and Louis Gaebler, 23) tied to TeamPCP, whose sloppy OPSEC (reused credentials, unredacted social media) led to their identification despite only ~$20K in proceeds; and an in-depth look at how DPRK's PolinRider campaign reinfects developers even after partial cleanup, driven by a new persistence technique that overwrites the npm CLI binary itself (triggering "reinstall malware?" on next npm run) alongside the existing vscode-task.json trigger and RAT. The hosts detail the expanding reachability-based targeting of JS/TS/CJS/MJS files, the new NullReceiver-branded payload, and a real case study (Gutenberg maintainer "Diogo"/fetch-page-assets) where DPRK pushed malicious updates riding along on the developer's own legitimate npm publishes, underscoring why disclosing infections to collaborators is necessary to stop reinfection through shared repos.

TL;DR OpenSourceMalware Show recap: TeamPCP members arrested after terrible OPSEC, and DPRK's PolinRider now persists by overwriting the npm CLI binary itself, defeating partial remediation.

Organisations named here

  • Brian Krebs
  • KernelStub
  • Louis Gaebler
  • NullReceiver
  • Ruben Thomson

Technologies named here

  • npm
  • GitHub
  • VS Code
  • git
  • PyPI
  • Go

Threat actors named here

  • TeamPCP
  • PolinRider
  • DPRK
  • Contagious Interview
  • Lapsus$
  • ShinyHunters