
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 ~$20K in proceeds; and an in-depth look at how DPRK's PolinRider campaign reinfects developers even after partial cleanup, driven by a new persistence technique that overwrites the npm CLI binary itself (triggering "reinstall malware?" on next npm run) alongside the existing vscode-task.json trigger and RAT. The hosts detail the expanding reachability-based targeting of JS/TS/CJS/MJS files, the new NullReceiver-branded payload, and a real case study (Gutenberg maintainer "Diogo"/fetch-page-assets) where DPRK pushed malicious updates riding along on the developer's own legitimate npm publishes, underscoring why disclosing infections to collaborators is necessary to stop reinfection through shared repos.
Organisations named here
- Brian Krebs
- KernelStub
- Louis Gaebler
- NullReceiver
- Ruben Thomson
Technologies named here
- npm
- GitHub
- VS Code
- git
- PyPI
- Go
Threat actors named here
- TeamPCP
- PolinRider
- DPRK
- Contagious Interview
- Lapsus$
- ShinyHunters
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