Researchers from Cisco’s Talos security team have uncovered a malware-as-a-service operator that used public GitHub accounts as a channel for distributing an assortment of malicious software to targets.

The use of GitHub gave the malware-as-a-service (MaaS) a reliable and easy-to-use platform that’s greenlit in many enterprise networks that rely on the code repository for the software they develop. GitHub removed the three accounts that hosted the malicious payloads shortly after being notified by Talos.

“In addition to being an easy means of file hosting, downloading files from a GitHub repository may bypass Web filtering that is not configured to block the GitHub domain,” Talos researchers Chris Neal and Craig Jackson wrote Thursday. “While some organizations can block GitHub in their environment to curb the use of open-source offensive tooling and other malware, many organizations with software development teams require GitHub access in some capacity. In these environments, a malicious GitHub download may be difficult to differentiate from regular web traffic.”

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Millions of low-cost devices for media streaming, in-vehicle entertainment, and video projection are infected with malware that turns consumer networks into platforms for distributing malware, concealing nefarious communications, and performing other illicit activities, the FBI has warned.

The malware infecting these devices, known as BadBox, is based on Triada, a malware strain discovered in 2016 by Kaspersky Lab, which called it "one of the most advanced mobile Trojans" the security firm's analysts had ever encountered. It employed an impressive kit of tools, including rooting exploits that bypassed security protections built into Android and functions for modifying the Android OS's all-powerful Zygote process. Google eventually updated Android to block the methods Triada used to infect devices.

The threat remains

A year later, Triada returned, only this time, devices came pre-infected before they reached consumers’ hands. In 2019, Google confirmed that the supply-chain attack affected thousands of devices and that the company had once again taken measures to thwart it.

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Researchers have found malicious software that received more than 6,000 downloads from the NPM repository over a two-year span, in yet another discovery showing the hidden threats users of such open source archives face.

Eight packages using names that closely mimicked those of widely used legitimate packages contained destructive payloads designed to corrupt or delete important data and crash systems, Kush Pandya, a researcher at security firm Socket, reported Thursday. The packages have been available for download for more than two years and accrued roughly 6,200 downloads over that time.

A diversity of attack vectors

“What makes this campaign particularly concerning is the diversity of attack vectors—from subtle data corruption to aggressive system shutdowns and file deletion,” Pandya wrote. “The packages were designed to target different parts of the JavaScript ecosystem with varied tactics.”

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The researchers said the attackers behind the campaign had "deep understanding of the target community."