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GhostAction Campaign Expands to Inject Malicious GitHub Workflows Stealing AWS Keys and Tokens

The GhostAction campaign has returned with an expanded technique that targets a wider range of credentials across hundreds of repositories. On October 8, two compromised maintainer accounts injected a malicious workflow named security-audit.yml into 346 GitHub repositories, including high-profile projects such as uber/athenadriver and kitao/pyxel. The workflow disguises itself as a security audit routine and executes automatically on every code push, exfiltrating credentials via HTTP requests to attacker-controlled servers. Unlike previous waves that only harvested GitHub Actions secrets, the new version also scans the working directory and full git history for forgotten credentials in older commits. Targeted data includes AWS access keys, GitHub and GitLab tokens, Google API keys, Slack and SendGrid tokens, OpenAI and Anthropic credentials, PyPI passwords, and crates.io tokens. Since October 7, more than 500 GitHub accounts have planted similar workflows, building on earlier campaigns that affected 817 repositories in September 2025 and 772 between August and September.

BoletimSecTranslated from Portuguese

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The GhostAction campaign has returned with a significantly broader technique for stealing credentials from open-source projects. On October 8, two compromised maintainer accounts injected a malicious workflow into 346 GitHub repositories, including prominent projects such as uber/athenadriver and kitao/pyxel, the latter holding more than 18,000 stars.

The injected file is named security-audit.yml and is accompanied by a commit message referencing a security audit. This disguise reduces the likelihood that legitimate maintainers will notice the change, as it appears to be a protective routine rather than an obvious attack.

The workflow executes automatically on every code push without requiring any action from the repository owner. It collects credentials and transmits them via HTTP requests to servers controlled by the attackers. The key evolution from prior waves is the expanded scope of data collection: the malicious workflow now scans both the working tree and the complete git history to locate credentials that may have been accidentally committed in older changes.

The list of targeted credentials includes AWS access keys, GitHub and GitLab tokens, Google API keys, Slack and SendGrid tokens, OpenAI and Anthropic credentials, PyPI passwords, and crates.io tokens.

The October 8 activity forms part of a larger operation. Since October 7, more than 500 GitHub accounts have planted workflows of this type. Earlier campaigns compromised 817 repositories in September 2025 and another 772 repositories between August and September of the same year.

Security researchers recommend that maintainers revoke all active GitHub sessions, personal access tokens, OAuth grants, and SSH keys. Additional steps include scanning the entire git history for exposed secrets, reviewing GitHub Actions execution logs, and enforcing strict review requirements for any modifications to the workflows directory.

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