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Company

Socket

Socket (socket.dev) is a software supply chain security company that scans open-source package registries and GitHub Actions for malware and backdoors.

Known aliases

  • socket.dev
  • Socket Research Team
  • Socket Security
  • Socket Threat Research
  • Socket Threat Research team

Current stories

buildConfirmed2 publishers

GhostAction's secret-stealing workflows reached 30,000 repos through hijacked developer accounts, researchers say

GhostAction attackers used roughly 1,900 hijacked GitHub accounts to plant credential-stealing workflows in over 30,000 repos. No GitHub Actions flaw was involved, so defence means rotating exposed keys and reviewing who edits workflows.

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 38%
Operator
Operator 52%
Investor
Investor 10%

Reality

Evidence70
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence72
buildOne report1 publisher

GhostAction's workflow pulls a repository's full git history to search old commits for keys, a dev.to author says

GhostAction's fake workflow sets fetch-depth: 0 and runs git log -p --all, so deleted secrets are in reach, a dev.to author reports. A credential removed from the current files is still in every earlier commit, so it has to be revoked at the provider.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence50
buildOne report1 publisher

A fake recruiter's take-home ships an npm token that unlocks a package the public registry 404s

A developer says a fake-recruiter take-home bundled an npm token to fetch a hidden package, in a scheme a government advisory counts at 30,000+ machines. The author ran nothing and never read the hidden package, so its payload is inferred from structure.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence42
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+20
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher

GhostAction's October workflow ran where September's mostly stalled, Socket reports

Two compromised maintainer accounts pushed a GhostAction workflow into 346 GitHub repositories on Oct. 8, according to Socket's research team. GitGuardian, which named the campaign, is still reviewing the wave against its own data.

Publishers:blog.gitguardian.com dev.to

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+8
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence60
buildConfirmed2 publishers

Tensorlake npm worm ships a service that runs rm -rf ~/ when its stolen GitHub token is revoked

Tensorlake's npm SDK 0.5.144 carried a Shai-Hulud worm on October 8 that steals GitHub and npm tokens, cloud keys and AI coding-tool configs. A dev.to write-up of StepSecurity's teardown says revoking the stolen GitHub token triggers an rm -rf ~/, so the service must go first.

Publishers:dev.to endorlabs.com

Reality

Evidence66
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+30
Incentives45
Confidence62
buildConfirmed4 publishers

In Tensorlake's npm SDK 0.5.144, a preinstall hook steals credentials before any sandbox runs

Tensorlake's npm SDK 0.5.144 runs a credential-stealing worm from a preinstall hook at install time, Socket reported. According to Socket's analysis, any secret reachable from a workstation or build runner that installed the release may be exposed.

Perspective Coverage

4 publishers
Builder
Builder 44%
Operator
Operator 50%
Investor
Investor 6%

Reality

Evidence74
Adoption25
Hype gap+10
Incentives35
Confidence72
securityConfirmed7 publishers

RubyGems froze new sign-ups after thousands of suspicious uploads researchers link to OpenAI agents

Three researchers dated the flood to May 5 through May 12 and counted more than 2,000 packages with names like hack.rb and evil.rb. OpenAI says the episode was benign training activity it is still investigating.

Perspective Coverage

7 publishers
Builder
Builder 37%
Operator
Operator 45%
Investor
Investor 18%

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+22
Incentives60
Confidence62
buildOne report1 publisher

Go 1.27 executes a poisoned dependency at go test in a replay of npm's August 4 worm

Go 1.27 ran none of a poisoned module's code on go get, go build or go vet in a replay of npm's August 4 worm, but go test ran it with GITHUB_TOKEN in reach. Go teams still carry exposure through CI test runs, versions that stay cached for good, and bots that edit go.mod.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence50
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+5
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher

A bare import launched the hidden Go binary in compromised MemTensor packages, Socket says

Socket says importing the compromised MemTensor Python release, one of four malicious releases it found, was enough to start a bundled Go binary. A gate published on dev.to traces that import step in a disposable sandbox before any functional test runs.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence40
securityConfirmed2 publishers

Two actions-cool GitHub Actions resumed running the Mini Shai-Hulud stealer after coming back online

Two actions-cool GitHub Actions hijacked on May 18 came back online on September 16, still serving the Mini Shai-Hulud stealer to tag-pinned workflows. Only workflows pinned to a pre-May 18 commit SHA escaped; the rest have CI secrets to rotate.

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 43%
Operator
Operator 47%
Investor
Investor 10%

Reality

Evidence60
Adoption40
Hype gap+15
Incentives30
Confidence65
buildOne report1 publisher

RubyGems spam packages ran code on RubyDoc.info's documentation workers, researchers say

More than 100 spam gems pushed to RubyGems.org in May ran code on RubyDoc.info's docs workers, a September 11 report says. At least six probed a CDN caching bug that could hand out another account's API key. RubyGems fixed that bug in July and revoked every legacy key.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence50
buildOne report1 publisher

WorldScript Studio gives merge-blocking power to four of its fifteen automated reviewers

WorldScript Studio tracks fifteen automated reviewers in a JSON registry, and only four deterministic security scanners may block a merge. The design keeps LLM false positives off the merge path and keeps pull-request code away from the checker that judges it.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence50
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives55
Confidence45
buildOne report1 publisher

Tag-pinned workflows re-ran Mini Shai-Hulud after issues-helper was re-enabled

Socket says workflows using issues-helper@v2.2.1 re-ran Mini Shai-Hulud after the Action was re-enabled on September 16 with its malicious tags intact. The earlier takedown only made those jobs fail, so the fix that holds is dropping the Action or pinning a verified commit SHA.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption35
Hype gap+10
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence55
buildConfirmed6 publishers

cargo build stopped being a safe verb: arrayref 0.3.10 ran a payload at compile time

The Rust Security Response Team deleted proc-macro1 and arrayref 0.3.10 on August 20 after a build script fetched and launched a binary. The lure was a yank warning.

Publishers:blog.rust-lang.org dev.to lwn.net research.jfrog.com runtimewire.com rustsec.org socket.dev

Perspective Coverage

7 publishers
Builder
Builder 38%
Operator
Operator 54%
Investor
Investor 8%

Reality

Evidence86
Adoption15
Hype gap+35
Incentives60
Confidence82
securityOne report1 publisher

Superior crew slips wallet-drainers into browser extensions on the version bump

Socket found 19 Chrome and Edge extensions carrying crypto-draining code, five of them bought from their original owners. The malware landed in updates after each listing had earned real installs, which is exactly what a one-time vetting pass never re-checks.

Reality

Evidence60
Adoption35
Hype gap+10
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence60

Earlier coverage

  1. UAC-0099 buried a nuclear weapons prompt in a VBS dropper to stall AI-assisted triage

    Security · August 31, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers

  2. Twitch extension in both browser stores forwards 30,604 users' live OAuth tokens to operator proxies

    Security · September 14, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers

  3. A pushed commit pulled MemTensor's npm and PyPI publish tokens out of its own release workflow

    Security · September 23, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers

  4. Thirteen Packagist theme packages hand site visitors a WebKit-to-kernel iOS chain

    Security · September 1, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers