Amidst the ongoing threat of software supply chain attacks targeting developers, a concerning discovery has emerged involving malicious packages on the Rust programming language’s crate registry. Released between August 14 and 16, 2023, by a user identified as “amaperf,” these packages, including postgress, if-cfg, xrvrv, serd, oncecell, lazystatic, and envlogger, have since been removed.
Furthermore, the report from Phylum, published last week, highlights that these packages exhibited capabilities to capture crucial operating system information, such as Windows, Linux, macOS, or Unknown, transmitting this data through a hard-coded Telegram channel using the messaging platform’s API. The motive behind this campaign remains unclear, but the observed functionalities suggest an early-stage effort aimed at compromising developer machines en masse to enable future rogue updates with enhanced data exfiltration capabilities.
This incident underscores the growing significance of developers as prized targets, given their possession of SSH keys, control over production infrastructure, and access to valuable company intellectual property. The uncertain intentions of this campaign mirror a previous attack on crates.io in May 2022, where a supply chain assault named CrateDepression exploited typosquatting tactics to pilfer sensitive data and deploy arbitrary files.
In a parallel development, Phylum disclosed a concerning npm package named emails-helper, presented as a “JavaScript library to validate email addresses against different formats.”
This seemingly innocent module revealed malicious behavior, setting up a concealed callback mechanism to surreptitiously transmit machine information to a remote server while utilizing encrypted binaries for a sophisticated attack. The complexities of these threats necessitate vigilant caution and meticulous diligence from developers as they navigate their software development processes.
