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HACKERS HIDE REMCOS RAT IN GITHUB REPOSITORY COMMENTSHACKERS HIDE REMCOS RAT IN
GITHUB REPOSITORY COMMENTS

The tack highlights bad actors' interest in trusted development and
collaboration platforms — and their users.

Jai Vijayan, Contributing Writer

October 9, 2024

4 Min Read
Source: Tada Images via Shutterstock


Trusted and widely used software development and collaboration platforms like
GitHub and GitLab have become both targets of and vehicles for a growing range
of malicious activity.

The latest manifestations of that trend include a malware distribution campaign
involving legitimate GitHub repositories and the availability this week of an
exploit for a vulnerability that allows an attacker to gain access as any user
of GitLab.

The first is an example of how attackers are exploiting the trusted reputation
of platforms like GitHub to try and sneak malware past endpoint detection
mechanisms. The GitLab vulnerability, meanwhile, highlights the growing exposure
to organizations from exploits that give attackers access to code repositories
and exfiltrate secrets and data, modify or inject code into software, and
manipulate the CI/CD pipeline.


HOSTING MALWARE ON TRUSTED GITHUB REPOS

Researchers at Cofense this week reported a phishing campaign where a threat
actor is attempting to direct targeted victims in the insurance and finance
sectors to malware hosted on trusted GitHub repositories. The campaign involves
the attacker sending victims tax-themed phishing emails containing a link to a
password-protected archive containing Remcos, a remote access Trojan that
cybercriminals and state-backed groups alike have used in various
cyber-espionage and data theft attacks over the years.

What makes the campaign noteworthy, according to Cofense, is how the threat
actor has managed to sneak the archive files containing the Remcos RAT into
legitimate GitHub repositories belonging to trusted entities. Examples of such
entities include His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the UK's national tax
authority; New Zealand's counterpart, InlandRevenue; and UsTaxes, an open source
tax-filing platform.

In each instance, the attacker used GitHub comments to upload a malicious file
containing Remcos RAT to the repositories of the respective entities.



Many GitHub repositories allow developers to comment on ongoing and
collaborative software projects. The comments can cover a wide range of topics,
including proposed code changes, documentation and bug-related issues, task
creation clarification requests, task management and progress updates, and merge
conflict resolution.

"GitHub comments are useful to a threat actor because malware can be attached to
a comment in a GitHub repository without having to upload it to the source code
files of that repository," Cofense security researcher Jacob Malimban wrote in a
blog post. "This means that any organization's legitimate GitHub repository that
allows comments can contain unapproved files outside of the vetted code."
Unsanctioned files that someone might submit via GitHub comments end up in a
subdirectory that is separate from the one containing the repository's vetted
files, Malimban said. What is especially troubling is the fact that the link to
the malicious file will continue to work even if the comment itself gets
deleted.


MULTIPLE INCIDENTS

Other threat actors have noticed the opportunity as well. A recent case in point
is the purveyor of the Redline Stealer, who earlier this year was spotted using
no less than Microsoft's own GitHub repository to host the information stealing
malware. In that campaign — as with the new Remcos RAT attacks that Cofense
spotted — the threat actor uploaded the malware as a comment to Microsoft's
GitHub vcpkg repository.

Emails with links to domains such as GitHub are effective at skirting secure
email gateways because of their trusted reputation. Attackers can, in fact,
directly link to their malware in such domains without the need to redirect
users to other sites, or without requiring them to use other security bypass
techniques like scanning QR codes, Cofense said.

The threat actor behind the new Remcos RAT could easily have targeted victims in
other sectors as well. But they likely deliberately kept their focus narrow to
test how effective the strategy of hosting malware on the GitHub repositories is
before attacking others, Malimban surmised.


GROWING THREAT ACTOR INTEREST

Meanwhile, the new exploit for GitLab targets a critical authentication bypass
vulnerability (CVE-2024-45409) affecting the Ruby-SAML and OmniAuth-SAML
libraries that GitLab uses to enable SAML-based single sign-on. The exploit
script gives attackers a way to abuse the vulnerability to access GitLab in the
context of any user. The vulnerability affects all versions of GitLab Community
Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) below 16.11.10. The flaw is also
present in multiple 17.x.x versions of GitLab.

The exploit is another sign of the growing researcher and threat actor interest
in repositories like GitHub and GitLab and their users. Over the past year there
have been multiple instances of attacks targeting repos on GitHub, like one
involving cyber-extortion that Chilean cybersecurity firm CronUp reported in
June and another involving the use of ghost accounts on GitHub to distribute
malware. GitLab users have had their share of security scares to deal with as
well, like CVE-2024-45409 and two other recent vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-6385
and CVE-2024-5655) that posed a major threat to the integrity of CI/CD
pipelines.




ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jai Vijayan, Contributing Writer



Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience
in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld,
where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the
publication. Over the course of his 20-year career at Computerworld, Jai also
covered a variety of other technology topics, including big data, Hadoop,
Internet of Things, e-voting, and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai
covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a
Master's degree in Statistics and lives in Naperville, Ill.

See more from Jai Vijayan, Contributing Writer
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