Microsoft's open source tools were hacked to steal passwords of AI developers

TZubiri

another day, another supply chain vulnerability

axus

Their source has the list of the 73 disabled repositories: https://opensourcemalware.com/blog/miasma-reaches-azure

JdeBP

These seem related: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48418318 ( The Blight Reaches Microsoft: 73 Repos Disabled in 105 Seconds ) * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48450543 ( Miasma Worm Hits Microsoft Again: Azure Functions Action and 72 Other Repositories Disabled After Supply Chain Attack Targeting AI Coding Agents ) * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48416155 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48416269 ( Miasma Worm Targets AI Coding Agents via GitHub Repos )

jbverschoor

Note that also the homebrew-tap was affected: homebrew-functions

dude250711

The Age of Agentic Development.

ares623

guys. what the fuck. are we even doing.

protoman3000

And we trust these people with the root CA cert in our Secure Boot?

minraws

Remember folks Microsoft has Mythos access

_pdp_

What follows next is purely speculation and it is based on my own observations and thoughts but based on what I've seen the old RBAC models, while being almost broken before, now it is fully broken, with the fact that now coding assistants and engineers are working on multiple unrelated projects simultaneously - especially working on wild experiments they had no time for previously. The risk of supply chain issue has increased dramatically in the enterprise. Again, I am not saying it is related but I think it has an impact. Now in many places it is encouraged by coders and managers to vibe stuff on their own devices. Soon or later it will become a problem, especially for those that have no idea what they are doing. I am not saying it is related but I feel that it coincides perfectly. I just cannot believe there is no underlaying thread going through all of these recent supply chain issues, and yes there are some hacking groups that specialise in this, sure, but it is because the bounty is plentiful.

zihotki

And the best recommendation security teams can give - keep your SBOM strict, use min release age policy (sounds more like band-aid). That's a scary world to live in.

axegon_

I hate to be the "I told you" guy but... I told you and have been for years. And every time I do, a flock of sloppers come to say "but have you tried the claude sloppus, it's so good man, I haven't written any code in X months". Well.. Enjoy.

bilekas

The phrasing of the title is loaded and the content phrases it as some kind of fault of open source. Then, which I find the most amusing, proceeds to blame MicroSlop for the attempted suuply chain attack, > Microsoft did not immediately provide the specific number of customers affected, when asked by TechCrunch. Yeah, because that's how open source works. Tech crunch doing hard work no not explain that. > This is Microsoft’s second known breach over the past few weeks that has allowed hackers to compromise its open source projects, per Ars Technica. I, like many others love to knock on Microslop when I can, but in this case they did the right thing. The article phrases it like they did everything wrong, they're all at fault and shame on them for limiting the breach. This is not the first time I've seen an article from Zack Whittaker that just rubbed me the wrong way. > steal passwords of AI developers This phrasing has it's own connotations. AI developers versus developers who use AI? > This is the latest example in recent months of hackers breaching widely popular open source projects with the aim of planting malware on a large number of users who have the code installed on their computers. These hacks are known as “supply chain” attacks as they target code that is often used in a large number of software products, or by a specific kind of user, which may be advantageous to hack as they sometimes have access to cloud systems and large amounts of customers’ data. Describes literally nothing of what a supply chain attack is, just the result of one and the reasons for their attack surface. Very very bad reporting in my opinion. Bad breach, and I hate to admit M$ did the safe and right thing, but this 'reporting' leaves a lot to be desired.

bob1029

I strongly suspect this is a case of classic personal access tokens being used in an unclean way. If you are going to be handing tokens to AI agents on weird openclaw contraptions, you should try to use the fine grained variants. My GitHub account spans 3 organizations with wildly differing policies. The fact that classic tokens are even still allowed blows my mind a bit. You should be required to manually opt in each organization at a minimum.

raincole

> steal passwords of AI developers What does this even mean? The malware specifically steals passwords from developers who use AI? From those who develop AI tool? Or it steals API tokens, which serve a similar function as passwords do for humans? Is this what journalism looks like today? Just slap the two holy letters on the title and you get views? (Yes, I read the article. No, I still don't think the title makes sense. You can skip this techchurch slop and read the real information here: https://opensourcemalware.com/blog/miasma-reaches-azure )

yossufyahia

It actually feels like nothing is safe now every day you hear about hacking is it from the ai making development weak or ai is getting strong in hacking

abc3354

"No way to prevent this" say users of only package manager where this... Oh no sorry I thought this was Javascript Haters weekly meetup

ashishb

Nobody should do 'npm install' or 'pip install' on their machine. Using a proper sandboxing( https://github.com/ashishb/amazing-sandbox ) regularly will drastically limit the blast radius of these attacks.

haute_cuisine

Please, someone explain how it's possible to add obfuscated file to so many repositories? Do they don't have any code reviews? Also, the title is misleading, setup adds config to be auto executed by people who work on the repo. They would have to use vscode/cursor/claude/gemini. People who use codex / opencode / other harnesses are safe I guess. Details: https://www.stepsecurity.io/blog/miasma-worm-hits-microsoft-...

shevy-java

GitHub keeps on having problems a LOT in the last months. Skynet is winning now.

pluc

If you want to be taken seriously, don't use Windows.