Malicious npm Package Targets GitHub Actions CI/CD Workflows
A malicious npm package named @acitons/artifact was discovered impersonating the legitimate @actions/artifact module, specifically targeting GitHub Actions CI/CD pipelines. The package was designed to be triggered during the build process of GitHub-owned repositories, where it would capture available tokens from the build environment and use them to publish malicious artifacts under GitHub’s name. The attack leveraged a post-install hook to download and execute an obfuscated shell script called harness, which was not detected by popular antivirus solutions. The package was downloaded over 260,000 times before being detected, with six malicious versions uploaded to npm.
Further analysis revealed that the malware was configured to only execute if certain GitHub-specific environment variables were present, indicating a targeted attack against GitHub’s own repositories. The script exfiltrated sensitive data in encrypted form to a remote server and was designed to avoid execution after a specific date. Another related npm package, 8jfiesaf83, was also identified with similar functionality but has since been removed. The threat actor behind the campaign, identified as "blakesdev," removed the offending versions after discovery, but the incident highlights the risks of supply chain attacks in CI/CD environments and the potential for privilege escalation through typosquatted dependencies.
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