GhostAction Campaign Expands to Inject Malicious GitHub Workflows Stealing AWS Keys and Tokens
The GhostAction campaign has returned with a significantly broader technique for stealing credentials from open-source projects. On October 8, two compromised maintainer accounts injected a malicious workflow into 346 GitHub repositories, including prominent projects such as uber/athenadriver and kitao/pyxel, the latter holding more than 18,000 stars.
The injected file is named security-audit.yml and is accompanied by a commit message referencing a security audit. This disguise reduces the likelihood that legitimate maintainers will notice the change, as it appears to be a protective routine rather than an obvious attack.
The workflow executes automatically on every code push without requiring any action from the repository owner. It collects credentials and transmits them via HTTP requests to servers controlled by the attackers. The key evolution from prior waves is the expanded scope of data collection: the malicious workflow now scans both the working tree and the complete git history to locate credentials that may have been accidentally committed in older changes.
The list of targeted credentials includes AWS access keys, GitHub and GitLab tokens, Google API keys, Slack and SendGrid tokens, OpenAI and Anthropic credentials, PyPI passwords, and crates.io tokens.
The October 8 activity forms part of a larger operation. Since October 7, more than 500 GitHub accounts have planted workflows of this type. Earlier campaigns compromised 817 repositories in September 2025 and another 772 repositories between August and September of the same year.
Security researchers recommend that maintainers revoke all active GitHub sessions, personal access tokens, OAuth grants, and SSH keys. Additional steps include scanning the entire git history for exposed secrets, reviewing GitHub Actions execution logs, and enforcing strict review requirements for any modifications to the workflows directory.
Related articles
Passwordless Kubernetes Image Pulling with Artifact Keeper via ServiceAccount Tokens
Kubernetes 1.34 and later enables kubelet to forward a pod's ServiceAccount token to an external image credential provider plugin, allowing the plugin to exchange it for short-lived read-only credentials from a compatible registry. Artifact Keeper, an open-source Rust-based OCI and package registry, implements an OIDC provider that validates these tokens and issues temporary credentials without requiring imagePullSecrets in manifests. The approach follows zero-trust principles by eliminating long-lived secrets that can leak across namespaces or clusters. A custom credential provider binary handles the token exchange, enforces audience restrictions, and redacts sensitive data from logs. The solution requires specific ClusterRole permissions for nodes, kubelet flags, and registry-side OIDC mappings that bind Kubernetes namespaces to read-only groups. Testing on kind 1.34.3 confirmed successful pulls for authorized ServiceAccounts and clear 401 errors for unauthorized ones when imagePullPolicy is set to Always.
Malicious Code Injected into LiteLLM Open Source AI Package via Supply Chain Attack
The open-source generative AI tool LiteLLM had malicious code inserted into its official distribution packages, enabling credential theft and remote code execution. The compromise affected version 1.107.0 released on October 21, 2026, and was delivered through legitimate channels in a classic software supply chain attack. Seven malicious wheel files were uploaded to PyPI, while official container images on Docker Hub and GitHub Container Registry were also tainted. Security firm JFrog discovered that the malware steals a wide range of secrets including cloud credentials, SSH private keys, browser-stored passwords, development tokens, and AI service API keys from LiteLLM's database. The code also supports execution of externally fetched payloads and abuses Python's startup mechanisms to run even when the application itself is not loaded. This marks the second supply chain incident involving the project in 2026, following a separate event in March.
GhostAction Campaign Compromises 790 GitHub Repositories via Malicious Workflows
Researchers from OpenSourceMalware have identified 790 publicly accessible GitHub repositories containing malicious workflows planted by the GhostAction campaign as of October 9. The campaign abuses trusted maintainer accounts to inject workflows that automatically exfiltrate secrets including AWS access keys and tokens for GitHub, GitLab, Google, Slack, SendGrid, OpenAI, Anthropic, and OpenRouter. Earlier counts by GitGuardian recorded 772 repositories between August 31 and September 30, though the datasets differ and are not cumulative. A separate wave on October 8 impacted 346 repositories linked to two maintainer accounts, including a project belonging to Uber. The malicious workflow runs on code pushes or manual triggers, scans repository files and full Git history for credentials, and sends findings in plaintext to attacker infrastructure. Removing the workflow file does not mitigate exposure, as successful executions already leak credentials and old commits may still contain secrets.
SberTech Launches Platform V Orchestrator for Security Services to Scan Software Before Corporate Deployment
SberTech has announced the launch of a new direction focused on analyzing the security of software prior to its integration into corporate infrastructures. The initiative is built around the company's own Laboratory for Software Verification and the technological platform Platform V Orchestrator for Security Services. This platform combines components for working with both built-in and external analysis tools, enabling checks of digital artifacts, control over software composition and changes, and detection of vulnerabilities, hidden threats, and defects in source code and repositories. SberTech aims to replace fragmented checks and manual result processing with a single managed process, allowing scaled verification without proportional team growth. The move responds to the adoption of hundreds of products from various vendors, widespread use of open-source components, and rising attacks on software supply chains. Primary customers include banks, industrial enterprises, telecom operators, energy companies, and the public sector. The solution is offered as a standalone product that supports on-premises deployment and operation in isolated environments such as private clouds and dedicated data processing contours.