GitHub | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

GitHub has revealed that it has rotated some keys in response to a security vulnerability that could be potentially exploited to gain access to credentials within a production container. The Microsoft-owned subsidiary said it was made aware of the problem on December 26, 2023, and that it addressed the issue the same day, in addition to rotating all potentially exposed credentials out of an abundance of caution. The rotated keys include the GitHub commit signing key as well as GitHub Actions, GitHub Codespaces, and Dependabot customer encryption keys, necessitating users who rely on these keys to import the new ones. There is no evidence that the high-severity vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2024-0200  (CVSS score: 7.2), has been previously found and exploited in the wild. "This vulnerability is also present on GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES)," GitHub's Jacob DePriest  said . "However, exploitation requires an authenticated user with an  organization owner role ...

Threat actors have been observed leveraging a now-patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows to deploy an open-source information stealer called  Phemedrone Stealer . "Phemedrone targets web browsers and data from cryptocurrency wallets and messaging apps such as Telegram, Steam, and Discord," Trend Micro researchers Peter Girnus, Aliakbar Zahravi, and Simon Zuckerbraun  said . "It also takes screenshots and gathers system information regarding hardware, location, and operating system details. The stolen data is then sent to the attackers via Telegram or their command-and-control (C&C) server." The attacks leverage  CVE-2023-36025  (CVSS score: 8.8), a security bypass vulnerability in Windows SmartScreen, that could be exploited by tricking a user into clicking on a specially crafted Internet Shortcut (.URL) or a hyperlink pointing to an Internet Shortcut file. The actively-exploited shortcoming was  addressed  by Microsoft as part of its November...

Serverless environments, leveraging services such as AWS Lambda, offer incredible benefits in terms of scalability, efficiency, and reduced operational overhead. However, securing these environments is extremely challenging. The core of current serverless security practices often revolves around two key components: log monitoring and static analysis of code or system configuration. But here is the issue with that: 1. Logs Only Tell Part of the Story Logs can track external-facing activities, but they don't provide visibility into the internal execution of functions. For example, if an attacker injects malicious code into a serverless function that doesn't interact with external resources (e.g., external APIs or databases), traditional log-based tools will not detect this intrusion. The attacker may execute unauthorized processes, manipulate files, or escalate privileges—all without triggering log events. 2. Static Misconfiguration Detection is Incomplete Static tools that check ...

The ubiquity of GitHub in information technology (IT) environments has made it a lucrative choice for threat actors to host and deliver malicious payloads and act as  dead drop resolvers , command-and-control, and data exfiltration points. "Using GitHub services for malicious infrastructure allows adversaries to blend in with legitimate network traffic, often bypassing traditional security defenses and making upstream infrastructure tracking and actor attribution more difficult," Recorded Future  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity firm described the approach as "living-off-trusted-sites" (LOTS), a spin on the living-off-the-land (LotL) techniques often adopted by threat actors to conceal rogue activity and fly under the radar. Prominent among the methods by which GitHub is  abused   relates  to  payload   delivery , with some actors leveraging its features for command-and-control (C2) obfuscation. Last month, Reve...

Collaboration is a powerful selling point for SaaS applications. Microsoft, Github, Miro, and others promote the collaborative nature of their software applications that allows users to do more. Links to files, repositories, and boards can be shared with anyone, anywhere. This encourages teamwork that helps create stronger campaigns and projects by encouraging collaboration among employees dispersed across regions and departments.  At the same time, the openness of data SaaS platforms can be problematic. A  2023 survey  by the Cloud Security Alliance and Adaptive Shield found that 58% of security incidents over the last two years involved data leakage. Clearly, sharing is good, but data sharing must be put in check. Most SaaS applications have mechanisms to control sharing. These tools are quite effective in ensuring that company resources aren't open for display on the public web. This article will look at three common data leakage scenarios and recommend best practic...

Threat actors are increasingly making use of GitHub for malicious purposes through novel methods, including abusing secret Gists and issuing malicious commands via git commit messages. "Malware authors occasionally place their samples in services like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Discord to host second stage malware and sidestep detection tools," ReversingLabs researcher Karlo Zanki  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "But lately, we have observed the increasing use of the GitHub open-source development platform for hosting malware." Legitimate public services are  known  to be  used  by  threat actors  for hosting malware and acting as  dead drop resolvers  to fetch the actual command-and-control (C2) address. While using public sources for C2 does not make them immune to takedowns, they do offer the benefit of allowing threat actors to easily create attack infrastructure that's both inexpensive and reliable. ...

Let's begin with a thought-provoking question: among a credit card number, a social security number, and an Electronic Health Record (EHR),  which commands the highest price on a dark web forum?   Surprisingly, it's the EHR, and the difference is stark: according to a  study , EHRs can sell for up to $1,000 each, compared to a mere $5 for a credit card number and $1 for a social security number. The reason is simple: while a credit card can be canceled, your personal data can't. This significant value disparity underscores why the healthcare industry remains a prime target for cybercriminals. The sector's rich repository of sensitive data presents a lucrative opportunity for profit-driven attackers. For 12 years running, healthcare has faced the highest average costs per breach compared to any other sector.  Exceeding an average of $10 million per breach , it surpasses even the financial sector, which incurs an average cost of around $6 million. The severity of t...

New research has found that over 15,000 Go module repositories on GitHub are vulnerable to an attack called repojacking. "More than 9,000 repositories are vulnerable to repojacking due to GitHub username changes," Jacob Baines, chief technology officer at VulnCheck,  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "More than 6,000 repositories were vulnerable to repojacking due to account deletion." Collectively, these repositories account for no less than 800,000 Go module-versions. Repojacking , a portmanteau of "repository" and "hijacking," is an attack technique that allows a bad actor to take advantage of account username changes and deletions to create a repository with the same name and the pre-existing username to stage open-source software supply chain attacks. Earlier this June, cloud security firm Aqua  revealed  that millions of software repositories on GitHub are likely vulnerable to the threat, urging organizations that undergo...

The title of this article probably sounds like the caption to a meme. Instead, this is an actual problem GitGuardian's engineers had to solve in implementing the mechanisms for their new  HasMySecretLeaked service . They wanted to help developers find out if their secrets (passwords, API keys, private keys, cryptographic certificates, etc.) had found their way into public GitHub repositories. How could they comb a vast library of secrets found in publicly available GitHub repositories and their histories and compare them to your secrets without you having to expose sensitive information? This article will tell you how. First, if we were to set a bit's mass as equal to that of one electron, a ton of data would be around 121.9 quadrillion petabytes of data at standard Earth gravity or $39.2 billion billion billion US dollars in MacBook Pro storage upgrades (more than all the money in the world). So when this article claims GitGuardian scanned a "ton" of GitHub public commit data, t...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning of publicly exposed Kubernetes configuration secrets that could put organizations at risk of supply chain attacks. "These encoded Kubernetes configuration secrets were uploaded to public repositories," Aqua security researchers Yakir Kadkoda and Assaf Morag  said  in a new research published earlier this week. Some of those impacted include two top blockchain companies and various other fortune-500 companies, according to the cloud security firm, which leveraged the GitHub API to fetch all entries containing .dockerconfigjson and .dockercfg types that  store credentials  for accessing a container image registry. Of the 438 records that potentially held valid credentials for registries, 203 records – about 46% – contained valid credentials that provided access to the respective registries. Ninety-three of the passwords were manually set by individuals, as opposed to the 345 that were computer-generated. "In the majority of ...

A new ongoing campaign dubbed  EleKtra-Leak  has set its eyes on exposed Amazon Web Service (AWS) identity and access management (IAM) credentials within public GitHub repositories to facilitate cryptojacking activities. "As a result of this, the threat actor associated with the campaign was able to create multiple AWS Elastic Compute (EC2) instances that they used for wide-ranging and long-lasting cryptojacking operations," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers William Gamazo and Nathaniel Quist  said  in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. The operation, active since at least December 2020, is designed to mine Monero from as many as 474 unique Amazon EC2 instances between August 30 and October 6, 2023. A standout aspect of the attacks is the automated targeting of AWS IAM credentials within four minutes of their initial exposure on GitHub, indicating that threat actors are  programmatically cloning and scanning the repositories  to captur...

GitHub has  announced  an improvement to its secret scanning feature that extends validity checks to popular services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, and Slack. Validity checks,  introduced  by the Microsoft subsidiary earlier this year, alert users whether exposed tokens found by  secret scanning  are active, thereby allowing for effective remediation measures. It was first enabled for GitHub tokens. The cloud-based code hosting and version control service said it intends to support more tokens in the future. To toggle the setting, enterprise or organization owners and repository administrators can head to Settings > Code security and analysis > Secret scanning and check the option "Automatically verify if a secret is valid by sending it to the relevant partner." Earlier this year, GitHub also  expanded  secret scanning alerts for all public repositories and announced the  availability of push protection ...

A new deceptive campaign has been observed hijacking GitHub accounts and committing malicious code disguised as Dependabot contributions with an aim to steal passwords from developers. "The malicious code exfiltrates the GitHub project's defined secrets to a malicious C2 server and modify any existing javascript files in the attacked project with a web-form password-stealer malware code effecting any end-user submitting its password in a web form," Checkmarx  said  in a technical report. The malware is also designed to capture GitHub secrets and variables to a remote server by means of a GitHub Action. The software supply chain security firm said it observed the atypical commits to hundreds of public and private GitHub repositories between July 8 and 11, 2023. It has emerged that the victims had their GitHub personal access tokens stolen and used by the threat actors to make falsified code commits to users' repositories by posing as Dependabot. Dependabot  is d...

Microsoft on Monday said it took steps to correct a glaring security gaffe that led to the exposure of 38 terabytes of private data. The leak was discovered on the company's AI GitHub repository and is said to have been inadvertently made public when publishing a bucket of open-source training data, Wiz said. It also included a disk backup of two former employees' workstations containing secrets, keys, passwords, and over 30,000 internal Teams messages. The repository, named " robust-models-transfer ," is no longer accessible. Prior to its takedown, it featured source code and machine learning models pertaining to a  2020 research paper   titled  "Do Adversarially Robust ImageNet Models Transfer Better?" "The exposure came as the result of an overly permissive  SAS token  – an Azure feature that allows users to share data in a manner that is both hard to track and hard to revoke," Wiz  said  in a report. The issue was reported to Microsoft on J...

A new vulnerability disclosed in GitHub could have exposed thousands of repositories at risk of repojacking attacks, new findings show. The flaw "could allow an attacker to exploit a race condition within GitHub's repository creation and username renaming operations," Checkmarx security researcher Elad Rapoport  said  in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "Successful exploitation of this vulnerability impacts the open-source community by enabling the hijacking of over 4,000 code packages in languages such as Go, PHP, and Swift, as well as GitHub actions." Following responsible disclosure on March 1, 2023, the Microsoft-owned code hosting platform has addressed the issue as of September 1, 2023. Repojacking , short for  repository hijacking , is a technique where a threat actor is able to bypass a security mechanism called popular repository namespace retirement and ultimately control of a repository. What the protection measure does is preven...

Millions of software repositories on GitHub are likely vulnerable to an attack called RepoJacking , a new study has revealed. This includes repositories from organizations such as Google, Lyft, and several others, Massachusetts-based cloud-native security firm Aqua  said  in a Wednesday report. The supply chain vulnerability, also known as dependency repository hijacking, is a  class of attacks  that makes it possible to take over retired organization or user names and publish trojanized versions of repositories to run malicious code. "When a repository owner changes their username, a link is created between the old name and the new name for anyone who downloads dependencies from the old repository," researchers Ilay Goldman and Yakir Kadkoda said. "However, it is possible for anyone to create the old username and break this link." Alternatively, a similar scenario could arise when a repository ownership is transferred to another user and the original acco...

At least half of dozen GitHub accounts from fake researchers associated with a fraudulent cybersecurity company have been observed pushing malicious repositories on the code hosting service. All seven repositories, which are still available as of writing, claim to be a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for purported zero-day flaws in Discord, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Exchange Server. VulnCheck, which discovered the activity,  said , "the individuals creating these repositories have put significant effort into making them look legitimate by creating a network of accounts and Twitter profiles, pretending to be part of a non-existent company called High Sierra Cyber Security." The cybersecurity firm said it first came across the rogue repositories in early May when they were observed releasing similar PoC exploits for zero-day bugs in Signal and WhatsApp. The repositories hosting the two PoCs have since been taken down. Besides sharing some of the purported findings on Tw...