Adversaries may manipulate software dependencies and development tools prior to receipt by a final consumer for the purpose of data or system compromise. Applications often depend on external software to function properly. Popular open source projects that are used as dependencies in many applications, such as pip and NPM packages, may be targeted as a means to add malicious code to users of the dependency.^[1],[2],[3] This may also include abandoned packages, which in some cases could be re-registered by threat actors after being removed by adversaries.^[4] Adversaries may also employ "typosquatting" or name-confusion by choosing names similar to existing popular libraries or packages in order to deceive a user.^[5],[6],[7]

Additionally, CI/CD pipeline components, such as GitHub Actions, may be targeted in order to gain access to the building, testing, and deployment cycles of an application.^[8] By adding malicious code into a GitHub action, a threat actor may be able to collect runtime credentials (e.g., via Proc Filesystem) or insert further malicious components into the build pipelines for a second-order supply chain compromise.^[9] As GitHub Actions are often dependent on other GitHub Actions, threat actors may be able to infect a large number of repositories via the compromise of a single Action.^[10]

Adversaries may also target the configuration and instruction files consumed by integrated development environments and AI coding agents. Project files such as tasks.json may execute commands when a developer opens or builds a project, while agent skill files (SKILL.md) supply an agent with instructions and resources that it loads on demand and runs with the permissions of the agent process.^{[11],[12],[13],[14]} To encourage downloads, adversaries may publish these files under benign-appearing or typo-squatted names, upload unmodified copies of the genuine skills first so the listings accumulate installs before the content behind them is weaponized, or may place the malicious instructions in a secondary document that the reviewed entry point references.^[15],[16] Because these artifacts are natural language or configuration rather than executable code, they may pass registry screening and signature-based scanning.^[16],[17]

Targeting may be specific to a desired victim set or may be distributed to a broad set of consumers but only move on to additional tactics on specific victims.

References

1. Trendmicro. (2018, November 29). Hacker Infects Node.js Package to Steal from Bitcoin Wallets. Retrieved April 10, 2019.
2. Silviu Stahie. (2021, November 8). Popular NPM Repositories Compromised in Man-in-the-Middle Attack. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
3. MANDVI. (2025, April 22). Malicious npm and PyPI Packages Disguised as Dev Tools to Steal Credentials. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
4. Ravie Lakshmanan. (2024, September 4). Researchers Find Over 22,000 Removed PyPI Packages at Risk of Revival Hijack. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
5. Deeba Ahmed. (2025, June 2). Backdoors in Python and NPM Packages Target Windows and Linux. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
6. Darren Meyer. (2025, May 28). PyPI Supply Chain Attack Uncovered: Colorama and Colorizr Name Confusion. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
7. Yehuda Gelb. (2024, April 10). New Technique to Trick Developers Detected in an Open Source Supply Chain Attack. Retrieved June 18, 2024.
8. Omer Gilm Aviad Hahami, Asi Greenholts, and Yaron Avital. (2025, March 20). GitHub Actions Supply Chain Attack: A Targeted Attack on Coinbase Expanded to the Widespread tj-actions/changed-files Incident: Threat Assessment . Retrieved May 22, 2025.
9. OWASP. (n.d.). CICD-SEC-4: Poisoned Pipeline Execution (PPE). Retrieved May 22, 2025.
10. Asi Greenholts. (2023, September 14). The GitHub Actions Worm: Compromising GitHub Repositories Through the Actions Dependency Tree. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
11. Sergey Menshykh. (2026, September 18). Agent Skills. Retrieved October 1, 2026.
12. Bernardo Quintero, Daniel Kapellmann Zafra. (2026, May 12). Beyond source code: The files AI coding agents trust — and attackers exploit. Retrieved October 1, 2026.
13. CrowdStrike. (2026, August). CROWDSTRIKE 2026 THREAT HUNTING REPORT. Retrieved October 1, 2026.
14. Microsoft Defender Experts, Microsoft Defender Security Research Team. (2026, March 11). Contagious Interview: Malware delivered through fake developer job interviews. Retrieved October 1, 2026.
15. Michael Bargury. (2026, August 6). Attackers Target Agents via The Skill Supply Chain. Retrieved October 1, 2026.
16. ESET Research. (2026, March 20). Too big to ignore? The security crisis brewing in AI agent platforms. Retrieved October 1, 2026.
17. Alfredo Oliveira, Buddy Tancio, David Fiser, Philippe Lin, Roel Reyes. (2026, February 23). Malicious OpenClaw Skills Used to Distribute Atomic macOS Stealer. Retrieved October 1, 2026.

Ticket collegati

• MITREATTACK -

  © 2026 The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation. https://attack.mitre.org/

  Terms of Use

  LICENSE

  The MITRE Corporation (MITRE) hereby grants you a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use ATT&CK^® for research, development, and commercial purposes. Any copy you make for such purposes is authorized provided that you reproduce MITRE's copyright designation and this license in any such copy.

  "© 2026 The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation."

  DISCLAIMERS

  MITRE does not claim ATT&CK enumerates all possibilities for the types of actions and behaviors documented as part of its adversary model and framework of techniques. Using the information contained within ATT&CK to address or cover full categories of techniques will not guarantee full defensive coverage as there may be undisclosed techniques or variations on existing techniques not documented by ATT&CK.

  ALL DOCUMENTS AND THE INFORMATION CONTAINED THEREIN ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS AND THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE MITRE CORPORATION, ITS BOARD OF TRUSTEES, OFFICERS, AGENTS, AND EMPLOYEES, DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION THEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

  See our FAQ for more information on how to use and represent the ATT&CK name.