Cybersecurity researchers have discovered two malicious packages on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository , posing as popular artificial intelligence models such as OpenAI ChatGPT and Anthropic Claude. Their goal was to distribute an information stealer called JarkaStealer .
The packages, named gptplus and claudeai-eng, were created by a user named “Xeroline” in November 2023, and had a total of 1,748 and 1,826 downloads, respectively. These packages are no longer available on PyPI. According to a post by Kaspersky, “the malicious packages were created by the same author and differed only in name and description.” They supposedly provided access to the GPT-4 Turbo API and Claude AI API, but contained malicious code that activated the malware upon installation.
The “__init__.py” file in these packages contained Base64-encoded data that installed a Java file (“JavaUpdater.jar”) from a repository on GitHub (“github[.]com/imystorage/storage”). If Java was not already installed on the computer, it downloaded the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from a URL on Dropbox before executing the JAR file.
The JAR file, known as JarkaStealer, is a Java-based information stealer capable of collecting sensitive information such as browser data, system information, screenshots, and tokens from applications such as Telegram, Discord , and Steam. Ultimately, the collected information is archived, sent to the attacker's server, and deleted from the victim's computer. JarkaStealer is offered as a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) service via a Telegram channel, for a cost of $20 to $50, although the source code has been leaked on GitHub.
Statistics from ClickPy show that the packages were downloaded primarily by users in the US, China, India, France, Germany and Russia, as part of a year-long supply chain attack campaign. “This discovery highlights the persistent risks of attacks in the software supply chain and the need for increased vigilance when integrating open source components into programming,” said Kaspersky researcher Leonid Bezvershenko.
Source: thehackernews
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