Attacker

Coinbase Identified as Primary Target in GitHub Action supply chain attack

Recently the attack on Coinbase by bad actors and targeting their agentkit project revealed that attackers are active in crypto community. The attackers gained right to access to the repository after obtaining a GitHub token with sufficient permissions.

As per researchers from at Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 and Wiz, attackers compromised continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines of thousands of repositories, putting them at risk.

The attack failed and highlighted the constant threats against crypto projects happening and in this case the aim was on the Coinbase project, get access to exchange ecosystem and steal crypto assets. On time Coinbase took handle of the incident that could have led attacker to change approach to a large-scale attack and compromise many projects.

As per Reuters, 2025 the crypto industry has suffered a series of thefts, prompting questions about the security of customer funds, with hacking amount more than $2 billion in 2024 – the fourth straight year where proceeds have topped more than $1 billion.

Details of the attack methodology

According to cybersecurity firm Wiz, its analysis of GitHub identities used in the attack shows that the attacker is active in the crypto community and likely operates from Europe or Africa.

The attack exploited vulnerabilities in popular GitHub Actions, leading to the potential exposure of sensitive CI/CD secrets across numerous projects.

The attack involved the compromise of the review dog/action-setup@v1 GitHub Action.

A total of 218 repositories were confirmed to have exposed secrets, despite over 23,000 using the affected action. The payload was focused on exploiting the public CI/CD flow of one of their open source projects – agentkit, probably with the purpose of leveraging it for further compromises. However, the attacker was not able to use Coinbase secrets or publish packages.

  • After this initial attack, threat actor believed to have moved to the larger attack scenario that has since gained widespread attention globally.
  • As per researchers the attacker began preparing several days before reports surfaced, eventually affecting specific versions of tj-actions/changed-files and putting a significant number of repositories at risk.
  • The incident reflects how attackers can abuse third-party actions or dependencies to compromise software supply chains, potentially resulting in unauthorized access, data breaches and code tampering.
  • Attackers actions confirmed what was initially highly focused on Coinbase and expanded to all projects utilizing tj-actions/changed-files once their initial attempt failed.

The exposed secrets included GitHub tokens and other sensitive information, with some being short-lived.

“The attacker took significant measures to conceal their tracks using various techniques, such as leveraging dangling commits, creating multiple temporary GitHub user accounts, and obfuscating their activities in workflow logs (especially in the initial Coinbase attack),” Gil, Senior Research Manager at Palo Alto Networks, told The Hacker News. “These findings indicate that the attacker is highly skilled and has a deep understanding of CI/CD security threats and attack tactics.”

Overview of attack:

The attack affected only 218 were confirmed to have leaked secrets. The majority of these secrets were short-lived tokens that expire after a single workflow run. However, some repositories also exposed more sensitive credentials, including those for DockerHub, npm, and AWS.

tj-actions and reviewdog

During March 10 and March 14, 2025, an attacker successfully pushed a malicious commit to the tj-actions/changed-files GitHub repository. This commit contained a Base64-encoded payload shown in Figure 1, which prints all of the credentials that were present in the CI runner’s memory to the workflow’s log.

(Image: unit42.paloaltonetworks)

Figure 1. The malicious snippet that was introduced to tj-actions/changed-files.

The company stated that their security measures prevented any successful exploitation of the exposed secrets.

While Coinbase managed to avert significant damage, the incident serves as a reminder for organizations to strengthen their security protocols and remain vigilant against potential threats in the software supply chain.

The attacker was able to add the malicious commit (0e58ed8) to the repository by using a GitHub token with write permissions that they obtained previously. The attacker disguised the commit to look as if it was created by renovate[bot] — a legitimate user.

The commit was then added to a legitimate pull request that was opened by the real renovate[bot] and automatically merged, as configured for this workflow.

These steps enabled the attacker to infect the repository, without the activity being detected. Once the commit was merged, the attacker pushed new git tags to the repository to override its existing tags, making them all point to the malicious commit in the repository.

Coinbase as a soft target for attackers

Cryptocurrency platforms are frequent targets for cybercriminals due to their high-value assets and financial data.

Coinbase’s agentkit repository is used for blockchain AI agents, meaning any compromise could potentially be used for manipulating transactions, altering AI behavior, or gaining unauthorized access to blockchain-related systems. Researchers have witnessed a systemic risks of software supply chains, particularly in open-source ecosystems.

When a single dependency is compromised, it can have far-reaching consequences across thousands of projects. The reliance on shared libraries and GitHub Actions makes modern development more efficient but also inherently vulnerable to such cascading attacks.

The GitHub Actions supply chain attack highlights the vulnerabilities inherent in widely used automation tools.


Sources:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/coinbase-was-primary-target-of-recent-github-actions-breaches/

https://undercodenews.com

 


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New Exploit Allows Remote Code Execution in Apache Tomcat 

Patch Without Delay

OEM Apache 
Severity Critical 
CVSS 9.8 
CVEs CVE-2025-24813 
Exploited in Wild Yes 
POC Available Yes 
Patch/Remediation Available Yes 
Advisory Version 1.0 

Overview 

The CVE-2025-24813 is recently identified Apache Tomcat vulnerability that is being actively exploited in the wild.  Under certain circumstances, this vulnerability permits information disclosure and remote code execution (RCE). 

A two-step exploit procedure can be used by attackers to take over compromised systems.  Patching became more urgent after a proof-of-concept (PoC) vulnerability was made public within 30 hours of disclosure. 

Depending on the privileges associated with the system, an attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data.

Vulnerability Name CVE ID Product Affected Severity 
 Remote Code Execution Vulnerability  CVE-2025-24813  Apache Tomcat  Critical 

Technical Summary 

The vulnerability arises from Tomcat’s handling of PUT and GET requests in environments where specific configurations are enabled. Exploitation requires: 

  • Writes enabled for the default servlet 
  • Partial PUT support enabled 
  • Security-sensitive files stored in a sub-directory of public uploads 
  • Attacker knowledge of the file names 
  • Use of file-based session persistence 

Successful exploitation allows attackers to upload malicious Java session files via a PUT request and trigger deserialization through a GET request, leading to RCE. A PoC exploit has been publicly released, making detection and mitigation critical. 

CVE ID System Affected Vulnerability Details Impact 
  CVE-2025-24813  Apache Tomcat  11.0.0-M1 to 11.0.2, 10.1.0-M1 to 10.1.34,  9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.98  Exploits PUT and GET request handling, allowing arbitrary file injection and execution.  Remote Code Execution, Information Disclosure. 

Remediation

  • Update the Apache Tomcat versions to the latest one v11.0.3, v10.1.35,  v9.0.99 to mitigate the vulnerability. 

General Recommendations: 

  • Disable partial PUT support: Prevent attackers from leveraging the exploit by disabling this feature if not required. 
  • Restrict access to sensitive files: Ensure security-sensitive files are not stored in publicly accessible directories. 
  • Implement authentication controls: Strengthen authentication and authorization for file upload operations. 
  • Enhance API security: Deploy real-time API security solutions to detect and block malicious PUT requests. 

Conclusion: 

CVE-2025-24813 represents a significant security risk, with active exploitation already observed. The availability of a public PoC exploit further increases the likelihood of widespread attacks. The ease of exploitation and the potential for severe consequences make it critical for affected organizations to apply the latest patches immediately. Additionally, security teams should enhance monitoring for suspicious PUT and GET request patterns to mitigate this attack technique. 

References: 

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