Compromised ConnectWise Credential Used to Access 173 Microsoft 365 Environments in Supply Chain Attack
A compromised credential belonging to ConnectWise Cloud Backup, previously known as SkyKick Backup, was used to gain access to at least 173 partner and customer environments in Microsoft 365. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has classified the incident as an active supply chain attack.
The unauthorized access did not rely on passwords or second-factor authentication. Instead, the attacker leveraged a client assertion issued from the vendor’s environment and presented itself as an already-approved application identity, successfully obtaining tokens from Microsoft Graph. The activity took place on 15 October between 06:13 and 08:34 UTC. The intruder enumerated environment identifiers in sequence with only seconds between attempts, a pattern consistent with automated scripting against a pre-compiled list of targets.
The permissions granted to the backup application included access to Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, and directory information. In at least one environment, another application from the same vendor was assigned the global administrator role and planted secrets in two trusted applications, with validity extending until 2028. The reported figure of 173 environments is considered a lower bound, as the credential could be used against any tenant where the application had been consented. The count had already risen from 162 on 16 October to 173 the following day.
As of 17 October, ConnectWise disabled seven application identities, revoked certificates associated with the affected connections, and suspended Cloud Backup services, rendering scheduled backups and restores unavailable. While disabling the connections prevents new authentications, previously issued tokens may remain valid until they expire. Organizations are advised to disable rather than delete the applications to preserve consent records and to review enterprise applications for any credentials added since 13 October.
Related articles
Audit of 25 Package Managers Shows Only Two Verify Every Package's Integrity Against Compromised Repositories
A comprehensive test by Trail of Bits examined 25 popular package managers to determine whether they detect malicious code substituted by a compromised repository. The study found that fewer than half verify package integrity by default using lockfiles, and only two managers check the cryptographic hash of every downloaded package. Most managers either require manual configuration, use hashes insecurely, or lack any integrity checks even when lockfiles are present. Signature verification is even rarer, with only Go performing checks by default. The research used a Docker and mitmproxy testbed to simulate attacks while preserving realistic conditions. Results highlight significant gaps in supply-chain protections across ecosystems including JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Rust, and others. The findings also discuss limitations of current lockfile designs and emerging improvements in several communities.
OIDC Configured but GitHub Actions Still Vulnerable: Megalodon and actions-cool Attacks Expose Runner Risks
Even after widespread adoption of OIDC for temporary cloud credentials in GitHub Actions, two major attacks in May 2026 demonstrated that the approach remains insufficient on its own. Attackers compromised actions-cool/issues-helper by substituting action tags to execute malicious commits that read Runner.Worker memory. The Megalodon campaign injected malicious workflows into 5,561 public repositories, harvesting environment variables, credential files, kubeconfig, SSH keys, and OIDC tokens. OIDC eliminates long-lived AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID secrets but leaves short-lived tokens exposed inside the runner during job execution. Four mandatory protection layers are now required: strict cloud trust policies using StringEquals on the sub claim, job-level id-token: write permissions, outbound traffic controls such as Harden-Runner, and CODEOWNERS enforcement on .github/workflows/. GitHub Environments with mandatory reviewers add an essential human-approval gate that would have disrupted the Megalodon attack path.
GitHub Repo Trap with 1774 Stars Mimics Microsoft Activation Scripts to Deliver Malware via Telegram Bot
A security researcher built a Telegram bot that daily delivers five trending GitHub repositories from trendshift.io along with README summaries. One repository named Microsoft Activation Scripts contained only a README with a reversed PowerShell command that decoded to download and execute a payload from a lookalike domain. The account was created 94 seconds before the repository and used classic one-liner installation syntax to blend with legitimate projects. Analysis of 321 trending repositories showed that simple filters such as recent account age or irm|iex patterns would incorrectly flag many legitimate projects including codex and opencode. Two independent detection rules were developed: one that normalizes and scans for obfuscated execution commands including base64, mshta, certutil and hidden window flags, and another that flags one-time owners created less than 30 days before the repository with under 10 KB of content. An additional groundedness check using the AIHOT method prevents DeepSeek from inserting unverified claims such as Ruby or Cypress into repository summaries.
GhostAction Campaign Expands to Inject Malicious GitHub Workflows Stealing AWS Keys and Tokens
The GhostAction campaign has returned with an expanded technique that targets a wider range of credentials across hundreds of repositories. On October 8, two compromised maintainer accounts injected a malicious workflow named security-audit.yml into 346 GitHub repositories, including high-profile projects such as uber/athenadriver and kitao/pyxel. The workflow disguises itself as a security audit routine and executes automatically on every code push, exfiltrating credentials via HTTP requests to attacker-controlled servers. Unlike previous waves that only harvested GitHub Actions secrets, the new version also scans the working directory and full git history for forgotten credentials in older commits. Targeted data 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. Since October 7, more than 500 GitHub accounts have planted similar workflows, building on earlier campaigns that affected 817 repositories in September 2025 and 772 between August and September.