GitGot: using GitHub repositories as exfiltration store

ReversingLabs identified two npm packages, “warbeast2000” and “kodiak2k” which were designed to steal SSH keys from developers by exploiting GitHub repositories as storage.

Impact

Fortunately, the reach of this campaign was limited. ReversingLabs observed different accounts publishing warbeast2000 and kodiak2k on npm. The warbeast2000 package was downloaded a little less than 400 times, whereas the kodiak2k was downloaded around 950 times.

Type of compromise

  • Trust and Signing: This means that in addition to leveraging implicit trust on github.com for pulls, attackers were using Personal Access Tokens (PATs) to leverage that implicit trust for exfiltration.

References