From Open-Source Repositories to On-Chain C2: Analysis of a Large-Scale Attack Campaign Exploiting GitHub and AI Trends

Evidence record

Secondary publication reproducing a Venustech ADLab campaign analysis. It reports large-scale abuse of GitHub for malicious file distribution, names malek733 among accounts the researchers associated with the activity, and lists a malek733/657 raw GitHub path under 128/01.txt among next-stage payload locations. Use as independent campaign context, not as evidence generated by the pinned Digging Beagle inspection.

Read the original source ↗

Claim-level citations (5)

• supportsGitHub malware campaign used AI-tool lures and staged payload hosting: ADLab reported that the campaign used filenames and repository themes imitating popular AI and automation tools, including OpenClaw-, Claude Code-, Gemini-, DeepSeek-, Qwen-, and Sora-themed downloads, to attract users.

  Section 2.1 attack-technique analysis and Section 2.2 Table 1, AI/automation lure examples

• supportsGitHub malware campaign used AI-tool lures and staged payload hosting: In one analyzed campaign sample, ADLab reported that malware queried Polygon blockchain infrastructure to obtain a later C2 address before requesting tasks and retrieving another encrypted payload from GitHub.

  Attack-case analysis, figures and text covering the Polygon smart-contract request, returned C2 address, task request, and GitHub payload retrieval

• supportsGitHub malware campaign used AI-tool lures and staged payload hosting: ADLab listed https://github.com/malek733/657/raw/refs/heads/main/128/01.txt as one of the campaign's next-stage payload storage locations.

  Section 2.2, Table 2, next-stage payload storage addresses

• supportsGitHub malware campaign used AI-tool lures and staged payload hosting: ADLab described later-stage payloads hosted in ordinary-looking GitHub files, including txt, html, css, js, json and log files, as encrypted or heavily obfuscated content that the loader decrypted or deobfuscated before execution.

  Section 2.1 staged-payload description and text immediately following Section 2.2 Table 2

• supportsGitHub malware campaign used AI-tool lures and staged payload hosting: ADLab reported that the GitHub-hosted malware campaign had been active since March 2025, had accumulated more than 2,700 malicious archive samples, and exceeded 1,000 newly observed malicious samples in March 2026.

  Overview, paragraphs describing campaign start, cumulative sample count, and the March 2026 peak