GitHub Repo Trap with 1774 Stars Mimics Microsoft Activation Scripts to Deliver Malware via Telegram Bot
A security researcher built a Telegram bot that daily delivers five trending GitHub repositories from trendshift.io along with README summaries. One repository named Microsoft Activation Scripts contained only a README with a reversed PowerShell command that decoded to download and execute a payload from a lookalike domain. The account was created 94 seconds before the repository and used classic one-liner installation syntax to blend with legitimate projects. Analysis of 321 trending repositories showed that simple filters such as recent account age or irm|iex patterns would incorrectly flag many legitimate projects including codex and opencode. Two independent detection rules were developed: one that normalizes and scans for obfuscated execution commands including base64, mshta, certutil and hidden window flags, and another that flags one-time owners created less than 30 days before the repository with under 10 KB of content. An additional groundedness check using the AIHOT method prevents DeepSeek from inserting unverified claims such as Ruby or Cypress into repository summaries.
HabrOct 13, 2026Translated from Russian