hackerbot-claw: An AI-Powered Bot Actively Exploiting GitHub Actions - Microsoft, DataDog, and CNCF Projects Hit So Far
A week-long automated attack campaign targeted CI/CD pipelines across major open source repositories, achieving remote code execution in multiple targets. The attacker, an autonomous bot called hackerbot-claw, used 5 different exploitation techniques and successfully exfiltrated a GitHub token with write permissions from one of the most popular repositories on GitHub. This post breaks down each attack, shows the evidence, and explains what you can do to protect your workflows.