Threat Actors Increasingly Abusing GitHub for Malicious Purposes
Jan 11, 2024
Cybersecurity / Software Security
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...