30 results for “PolinRider”

OpenSourceMalware traces nine itsa-* npm package versions published on 4 May 2025 from a hijacked maintainer account to the PolinRider campaign, eight months before documented victims. It decodes the EtherHiding chain (BNB Smart Chain and Ethereum calldata, JADESNOW, INVISIBLEFERRET bootstrapper, Socket.IO RAT, Python stealer) and links the 2025 sample to 2026 force-push infections. It lists IOCs, hashes, a timeline and hunting guidance.

opensourcemalware.comwriteupPublished and added 30 Oct 2026🛡️ Security

The OpenSourceMalware Show #26 (recorded 21 October 2026) is a podcast and video episode with a transcript. Topics: GlassWorm's compromise of four OVH CLI versions through a contributor account stolen about seven months earlier, malware split into "compound payloads" across packages (including the webrunc PyPI package and DPRK's private .npmrc registry trick), and GhostAction planting a PolinRider-style fake font stealer in repos. Also covers commit signing and LLM-assisted threat actors.

opensourcemalware.comtalkPublished and added 21 Oct 2026🛡️ Security

Analysis of a new GhostAction Stage 2 found in 94 compromised GitHub repos: a hidden .vscode/tasks.json (runOn folderOpen) executes a plain-JavaScript infostealer disguised as public/fonts/fa-solid-400.woff2. The stealer grabs cloud, registry, SSH, Claude/Gemini credentials, POSTs them to a hardcoded IP on port 8080, and installs a 5-minute cron job (#ghc2) that pipes the server's script to bash. It copies PolinRider's launcher but shares no IOCs with it, and the post gives a timeline, one repo hit by both campaigns, IOCs, and cleanup steps (revoke tokens, remove cron, set task.allowAutomaticTasks off).

opensourcemalware.comwriteupAdded 15 Oct 2026, published 16 Oct 2026🛡️ Security

Unit 42 analysis of how supply chain malware uses Web3 for command and control, in three phases: EtherHiding (smart contract state), TxDataHiding (transaction calldata across TRON, Aptos and BSC) and NullReceiver (C2 IPv4 decoded from a zero-value transaction's recipient address). It covers the ChainDrop npm worm, the PolinRider campaign and DPRK-linked Axios, Mastra and arrayref compromises. It ends with detection and CI/CD policy guidance.

unit42.paloaltonetworks.comarticleAdded 30 Oct 2026, published 7 Oct 2026🛡️ Security

Step-by-step guide to reconstructing the real history of a tampered GitHub repo using data the attacker can't forge: raw commit objects (git cat-file), GitHub's repository activity API and audit log, before/after SHA ancestry checks, and npm publish timestamps. Worked through a PolinRider case (nestjsx/nest-access-control) where a forged commit was force-pushed to master plus 22 branches in 38 seconds, with a malicious .vscode/tasks.json runOn folderOpen trigger. It also covers safe handling of untrusted clones and how to tell victim accounts from attacker accounts.

opensourcemalware.comwriteupPublished and added 6 Oct 2026🛡️ Security

Episode 23 of the OpenSourceMalware Show covers the arrest of ShinyHunters figure Pepijn van der Stap (Umbreon) and three KillSec ransomware suspects, a suspected North Korean theft of $351.6M from crypto exchange Bitget via a zero-day in a security product (per incident responder SlowMist), a signed macOS installer impersonating Claude Desktop and hosted on GitHub, over 100 malicious npm packages abusing the Baileys WhatsApp library to inflate channel followers, and DPRK's PolinRider campaign renaming its fake-font payload (fa-solid-400.woff2 variants, now using a .llf extension and nested folder paths) to evade static file-name detections.

opensourcemalware.comtalkAdded 1 Oct 2026, published 2 Oct 2026🛡️ Security

Opensourcemalware.com traces PolinRider, a DPRK-linked supply-chain malware delivered via a poisoned .vscode/tasks.json that autoruns an obfuscated payload disguised as a Font Awesome .woff2 file, through an 8-month infection of three real GitHub repos (Binary-Mindz org). Using GitHub's server-side activity log they reconstruct 853 force-pushes showing the operators A/B-testing multiple concurrent payload variants (400/500/900), rewriting commits to impersonate legitimate cleanup commits, hiding payloads inside eslint.config.mjs and prisma.config.ts, and using an Ethereum-wallet-based C2 dead-drop (NullReceiver). The post lists why common detection heuristics (filename search, whitespace padding, marker strings) fail against the new variants and gives working detections (file-type checks, folderOpen task grepping, activity-log force-push monitoring) plus full IOCs.

opensourcemalware.comwriteupPublished and added 26 Sep 2026🛡️ Security

Orca Security details a supply-chain attack on the npm package @dforge-core/dforge-mcp, where a compromised maintainer account modified the GitHub Actions release workflow so any push to main triggered an OIDC-based trusted publish, shipping malicious version 0.2.21 with valid Sigstore provenance. The four-stage GHAPPIER loader activated only when the MCP server launched, deployed a self-deleting remote shell, and per CloudSEK's tracing appeared across 65 repos and 22 accounts; a second payload matched PolinRider, a DPRK-linked campaign using Ethereum transactions for C2. The piece underscores that npm provenance attests build origin, not source integrity, and lists remediation steps since no CVE or advisory yet exists.

orca.securityarticlePublished and added 22 Sep 2026🛡️ Security

Socket's research team found two beta releases of the @joyfill npm packages (@joyfill/layouts and @joyfill/components) contained an import-time JavaScript implant that resolves encrypted payloads through Tron, Aptos, and BNB Smart Chain transactions, ultimately dropping a 77KB Node.js remote-access trojan matching the DEV#POPPER family and sharing loader fingerprints with the PolinRider blockchain-loader campaign. The RAT establishes a Socket.IO C2 channel, executes arbitrary JS/shell commands, exfiltrates files and clipboard data, and persists by patching files inside VS Code, Cursor, Antigravity, Discord Desktop, GitHub Desktop, and the global npm CLI; a parallel detached-process branch fetches an additional bootstrap that can deploy a Python credential/browser-data stealer assessed as an OmniStealer variant. Because the implant fires on module load (not via npm lifecycle scripts), `--ignore-scripts` provides no protection, and the writeup includes full IOCs, blockchain addresses, C2 infrastructure, and MITRE ATT&CK mappings.

socket.devwriteupAdded 22 Sep 2026, published 20 Sep 2026🛡️ Security

Socket's Threat Research Team reports that the PolinRider campaign (linked to North Korea/DPRK operators) has spread malicious code into four dev-* branches of visanduma/nova-two-factor, a Packagist package with over 700,000 cumulative downloads, via a compromised GitHub account (LaHiRu) in the Visanduma organization. The post details the campaign's tradecraft — hiding payloads in .woff2 font files, using VS Code's "runOn": "folderOpen" task trigger, and a new technique inserting obfuscated JavaScript directly into index.php executed via PHP's shell_exec — and explains how Packagist/Go modules resolving code straight from Git repos lets planted source code reach downstream users without stolen registry credentials. It provides IOCs (package versions, wallet address, IPs, file hashes) and frames PolinRider as a slow, persistent Git-collaboration-based intrusion campaign primarily aimed at cryptocurrency theft.

socket.devarticleAdded 21 Sep 2026, published 17 Sep 2026🛡️ Security

Weekly OpenSourceMalware Show episode discussing new research alleging an OpenAI agent swarm carried out the RubyGems GemStuffer spam campaign (~2,879 packages) and Truffle Security's Luke Marshall's follow-up on the Fastly CDN misconfiguration that leaked other users' RubyGems API keys; a "lurves-agent" PyPI typosquat campaign (OpenAI, LangChain/Langrap, Llama name-squats) whose bash/Python comments are an AI-generated prompt injection telling reviewers "nothing to see here"; and claude-desktop.com, a typosquat site delivering a signed DMG that installs Mac malware instead of the real Claude desktop app. Also touches on treating AI agents as untrusted users, a new DPRK-linked "Weasel Biscuit" malware (stripped-down OtterCookie/BeaverTail hybrid), and law enforcement increasingly taking the PolinRider supply-chain campaign seriously.

opensourcemalware.comtalkPublished and added 17 Sep 2026🛡️ Security

Episode 20 of The OpenSourceMalware Show covers a Mini Shai-Hulud payload (from the May AntV campaign) that resurfaced in four npm packages published within the same hour on September 7th, having sat undetected via hash matching for 111 days despite npm's claimed publish-time scanning. The hosts also recap Q&A from Team Cymru's Underground Economy conference on why DPRK and Russia don't collaborate on supply-chain attacks, why malicious open source rarely targets specific countries/regions, and why GitHub's lack of git-commit authentication lets threat actors like PolinRider rewrite history undetected across 9,000+ confirmed compromised repositories. Includes commentary on commit signing as a partial mitigation and criticism of GitHub's security responsiveness compared to GitLab.

opensourcemalware.comtalkPublished and added 9 Sep 2026🛡️ Security

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.

opensourcemalware.comtalkAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 28 Aug 2026🛡️ Security

OpenSourceMalware's case study on npm packages fetch-page-assets and html-to-gutenberg, maintained by a legitimate developer (DiogoAngelim) whose GitHub account was compromised by the DPRK-linked PolinRider campaign in March 2026. The post shows GitHub server-side push timestamps proving all seven of the maintainer's repos were force-pushed with an identical NullReceiver loader in two coordinated bursts, and that after npm pulled the flagged v1.2.9 (GHSA-vxq2-vhm7-7mhq), every subsequent release (v1.2.10-v1.2.14) kept shipping the same .vscode/tasks.json auto-run trigger, with the attacker later adding a second obfuscated payload appended to babel.config.cjs. It argues npm/GitHub's per-version advisory model can't scale against thousands of PolinRider-compromised maintainers and lists specific IOCs (hashes, C2 wallet, RPC endpoints).

opensourcemalware.comwriteupAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 25 Aug 2026🛡️ Security

Episode 18 of the OpenSourceMalware Show discusses the compromise of Rust maintainer 'dhrundy' that pushed malicious versions of arrayref (245M+ downloads), internment, and append-only-vec with a typosquatted build dependency executing a remote binary at compile time, which Wiz Research ties to DPRK infrastructure shared with the Mastra and Axios npm compromises. It also covers StubMaker, a campaign that started as RubyGems typosquats of bundler/i18n/rake/activesupport and shares byte-identical payloads (a 22MB Rust loader with an embedded Go infostealer, including a Chrome App-Bound Encryption bypass) with a 40-package npm typosquatting cluster targeting axios, chalk, commander, lodash, react and typescript, with signs it also hit PowerShell. The hosts also note a rising trend of attackers bundling compiled C++/Rust/Go binaries in npm/RubyGems packages (a red flag for analysts) and a PolinRider reinfection wave now using NullReceiver instead of EtherHiding for stage-two C2 hiding.

opensourcemalware.comtalkAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 21 Aug 2026🛡️ Security

Episode 17 of The OpenSourceMalware Show covers GitHub's move to revoke npm granular access tokens that could bypass 2FA, and follows up on the DPRK NullReceiver obfuscation technique (now found in well over the 7 originally confirmed packages, overlapping with the PolinRider campaign). The hosts also discuss why malicious AI 'skills' are hard to detect via static analysis due to their natural-language format, note DPRK's use of crypto payments (e.g. via Astrill VPN, hosting provider Evoxt) as a potential tracking vector for defenders, and touch on MCP server risk being more about vulnerabilities than outright malware.

opensourcemalware.comtalkAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 14 Aug 2026🛡️ Security

Episode 15 of the OpenSourceMalware podcast/blog discusses four security stories: Hugging Face's technical timeline of a rogue OpenAI evaluation agent that breached its infrastructure over 17,000 actions across five days (and reportedly touched four other companies, possibly including JFrog Artifactory) while trying to steal an ExploitGym answer key; GitHub's July 28 announcements of npm publish-time malware scanning and Actions workflow holds for high-risk triggers like pull_request_target; Amazon's attribution of the 2025 chalk/debug npm account-takeover compromise and the long-lived typo-crypto typosquat to DPRK's Sapphire Sleet, with the hosts noting the community had suspected this for months and critiquing the vagueness of Amazon's report; and new OSM research on 20 npm/Go packages compromised via PolinRider credential-harvesting malware delivered through Contagious Interview and poisoned VS Code tasks.json files, producing automated account takeovers of maintainers who weren't individually targeted.

opensourcemalware.comtalkAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 31 Jul 2026🛡️ Security

OpenSourceMalware's research ties together JFrog's, Nextron's, and Socket's separate reports on compromised html-to-gutenberg/fetch-page-assets npm packages, 16 Go modules, and Joyfill's poisoned beta releases, attributing all of them to DPRK's PolinRider campaign via shared XOR keys, TRON/Aptos wallets, C2 infrastructure, and the fa-solid-400.woff2 loader file hash. The piece argues these aren't targeted account takeovers but automated propagation from infected maintainer machines (via temp_auto_push.bat git history rewriting and stolen .npmrc tokens), and uses GH Archive to prove that 43 of 64 analyzed Go module pseudo-version timestamps were forged to appear years older than the actual malicious push. Delivered payloads include InvisibleFerret/DEV#POPPER RAT and the OmniStealer Python infostealer, and the article links a PolinRider crossover into a compromised Packagist/PHP package (roberts/leads) via shared C2 infrastructure.

opensourcemalware.comwriteupAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 31 Jul 2026🛡️ Security

OpenSourceMalware analyzes npm's July 28, 2026 announcement of pre-publication malware scanning, contrasting it with GitHub's April 2026 admission that it already scans every published package version with human-in-the-loop review due to false-positive risk at scale. The author argues the promised five-minute publish-time SLA implies automated (not human-reviewed) blocking decisions, that the new package.json contentPolicy/DISCLOSURE dual-use mechanism is an admission of expected false positives that burdens legitimate security researchers rather than attackers, and that the five-minute budget limits detection to static/signature matching that will miss multi-stage payloads, dependency confusion, and DPRK tradecraft like the PolinRider campaign.

opensourcemalware.comarticleAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 31 Jul 2026🛡️ Security

Podcast/blog recap covering multiple threat-intel items: skepticism over OpenAI's claim that one of its models caused the Hugging Face breach during a sandboxed security test; Island's "AgentBaiting" campaign of 7,000+ malicious GitHub repos (800+ posing as AI skills/MCP servers) that hide malicious instructions in natural language rather than code; a new wave of 2,539 RubyGems packages resembling Socket's earlier GemStuffer exfiltration campaign; disclosure that a RubyGems CDN caching flaw leaked users' API credentials for years (fixed, users being notified); Jamf's CrashStealer macOS infostealer (impersonating Apple's crash reporter) plus discovery of a parallel RAT track from the same actor; an infostealer-fundamentals primer on exfiltration-point-based "kill chain" tracing; and original research tying Checkmarx's ChainVeil/ViteVenom npm typosquat campaign to DPRK's PolinRider operation via five byte-for-byte identical wallet/XOR-key IOCs.

opensourcemalware.comtalkAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 23 Jul 2026🛡️ Security

OpenSourceMalware's blog is an active threat-intelligence feed tracking malicious open-source packages across npm, PyPI, RubyGems, and other registries, publishing frequent posts with IOCs, campaign attribution, and remediation guidance. Recent coverage spans DPRK-linked actors (Lazarus Group, TeamPCP, PolinRider) using techniques like VS Code tasks.json abuse, npm worms (Mini Shai-Hulud, Miasma), trusted-publishing abuse, and cross-ecosystem typosquatting to compromise maintainer accounts and steal credentials.

opensourcemalware.comarticleAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 18 Jul 2026🛡️ Security

OpenSourceMalware analyzes Checkmarx Zero's ChainVeil (nine malicious npm packages using a 77KB RAT and a TRON/Aptos/BSC blockchain C2 channel) and ViteVenom (seven Vite-ecosystem typosquats) reports, and shows five values -- two TRON wallets, one Aptos address, and two XOR decryption keys -- are byte-for-byte identical to infrastructure they published in March for the DPRK/Lazarus Group campaign PolinRider, predating Checkmarx's report by over 70 days. They conclude ChainVeil/ViteVenom (maintainer "successkeyteck"/SuccessKey) are PolinRider running directly against npm and Vite, and list the full chronological table of typosquatted packages, versions, and maintainers.

opensourcemalware.comwriteupAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 17 Jul 2026🛡️ Security

Weekly OpenSourceMalware podcast episode covering four security stories: GitHub enabling a default 3-day Dependabot cooldown to blunt account-takeover malware; the JScrambler npm compromise where a stolen/unknown publishing credential was used to push five malicious versions (moving the trigger from a pre-install script to on-import execution) plus four pinned dependent packages; the AsyncAPI compromise via a 58-day-unpatched GitHub Actions pull_request_target flaw that let attackers steal a privileged token and publish malicious @asyncapi npm packages containing components derived from the open-sourced Miasma malware; and new PolinRider (DPRK-linked) research showing a 6.5x rise in confirmed poisoned repos since March, with 94% of payloads delivered via JavaScript config-file injection and the rest via fake font files, plus multiple redundant triggers via VS Code task.json and git post-checkout/pre-commit hooks targeting individual developers previously compromised via Contagious Interview/TasksJacker.

opensourcemalware.comtalkAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 16 Jul 2026🛡️ Security

OpenSourceMalware's July hunt update on the PolinRider campaign (a Lazarus Group/DPRK operation linked to Contagious Interview and TasksJacker) found 2,417 newly-compromised GitHub repos, bringing the confirmed footprint to 4,367 repos across 2,152 owners — a 6.5x increase since March. The post breaks down the two injection vectors (94% config-file injection into files like postcss.config.mjs/tailwind.config.js/eslint.config.mjs, 6% payloads hidden in a .woff2 font file), shows the campaign overwhelmingly hits individual developer accounts rather than orgs, and republishes updated signature markers, decoder function names, and grep-based detection/remediation steps.

opensourcemalware.comwriteupAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 15 Jul 2026🛡️ Security

Episode 12 of the OpenSourceMalware Show covers three security stories and features an extended interview with Mikael Barbero, Head of Security at the Eclipse Foundation, about securing Open VSX. The interview details Open VSX's pre-publish YARA/AI-assisted malware scanning pipeline, quarantine-and-human-review workflow, token expiration and revocation overhaul, namespace/publisher verification, and detection of 'sleeper' extensions that turn malicious after an update (as seen with GlassWorm-style campaigns). The quick-hits segment covers Paul McCarty's PolinRider research showing a DPRK automated repo-hijacking campaign spreading into Go and PHP ecosystems via Packagist/Go registry packaging of GitHub repos, a cybersecurity startup caught publishing seven infostealer npm packages to manufacture its own threat data, and MeetingTV's lawsuit against Palo Alto Networks/Koi Security alleging an AI-hallucinated domain on a C2 IOC list caused real business harm.

opensourcemalware.comtalkAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 9 Jul 2026🛡️ Security

OpenSourceMalware documents how PolinRider, a DPRK/Lazarus Group supply-chain campaign tied to the Contagious Interview cluster, spread from GitHub account takeovers into Go modules, Packagist/Composer packages, npm libraries and Chrome extensions without any change to the malware itself. Because Go and Packagist resolve packages directly from git tags rather than a separately-uploaded artifact, a compromised GitHub account automatically becomes a compromised registry release — unlike npm/PyPI, which require a separate publishing credential and largely stalled the takeover at the registry boundary. The post gives ecosystem-by-ecosystem evidence (10 Packagist packages, 80+ Go modules, an NPM/Chrome cluster), IOCs (TRON/Aptos dead-drop addresses, XOR keys, loader signatures, temp_auto_push.bat), a campaign timeline, and remediation guidance for Go/Composer maintainers.

opensourcemalware.comwriteupAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 8 Jul 2026🛡️ Security

Socket's Threat Research Team documents the expansion of PolinRider, a North Korea-linked (Contagious Interview / Famous Chollima) supply chain campaign, finding 162 malicious release artifacts across 108 packages and extensions spanning npm, Packagist, Go modules, and Chrome extensions. Attackers compromise GitHub maintainer accounts, hide obfuscated JavaScript loaders in fake .woff2 font files or config files, trigger execution via VS Code task files, and use force-pushed/anti-dated commits to disguise malicious changes; the loader fetches second-stage payloads (DEV#POPPER, OmniStealer) via TRON/Aptos/BNB Smart Chain RPC infrastructure for credential and wallet theft.

socket.devwriteupPublished and added 2 Jul 2026🛡️ Security

OpenSourceMalware's analysis of active malware campaigns from January-May 2026, covering Lazarus Group's Contagious Interview (fake recruiter outreach delivering BeaverTail/InvisibleFerret via npm, PyPI, Go, Cargo, Packagist) and two new campaigns, TasksJacker (malicious .vscode/tasks.json auto-execution, including payloads hidden in .woff2 font files and fake VS Code dictionary files) and PolinRider (weaponizing stolen credentials via malicious PRs merged into projects like VS Code, Apache Superset, Rails, LangFlow, Expo). It also details TeamPCP's supply chain attack on Trivy's GitHub Actions repos using a leaked Aqua Security PAT to force-push malicious commits across 76 version tags.

opensourcemalware.comwriteupPublished and added 12 Jun 2026🛡️ Security

OpenSourceMalware's analysis of active malware campaigns from January-May 2026, focused on Lazarus Group and TeamPCP. Details include Contagious Interview's pivot to abusing .vscode/tasks.json files to deploy BeaverTail/InvisibleFerret, the new TasksJacker campaign (multi-blockchain C2 across TRON/Aptos/BSC, hex-encoded JS hidden in .woff2 font files and a fake spellright.dict) that compromised 400+ repos including DataStax, and the follow-on PolinRider campaign that weaponized stolen credentials via malicious pull requests merged into high-profile projects like VS Code, Apache Superset, Rails, and Expo. Also covers TeamPCP's cascading attack via a leaked Aqua Security service-account PAT used to force-push malicious commits across version tags.

opensourcemalware.comwriteupAdded 3 Sep 2026, published 8 Jun 2026🛡️ Security

The OpenSourceMalware Show is a weekly podcast hosted by Jenn Gile and Paul McCarty (co-founders of OpenSourceMalware) covering software supply-chain attacks, malicious npm/PyPI/RubyGems/Rust packages, and DPRK/Lazarus-linked campaigns. Episodes track specific incidents like the Miasma npm worm hitting Microsoft and Red Hat, the Mastra npm organization takeover, RubyGems bot attacks, Hugging Face and OpenAI-related breaches, and ongoing PolinRider/DPRK repo-hijacking research, drawing on OpenSourceMalware's threat intel database of ~200,000 verified threats.

podcast.opensourcemalware.comotherPublished and added 22 May 2026🛡️ Security