I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

https://citizendot.github.io/articles/fake-job-interview-git-hook-malware/

by CITIZENDOT • 2 hours ago

155 32 2 hours ago

citizendot.github.io

ChrisMarshallNY3• 54 minutes ago

I assume these types of things are going to become more and more common.

Looks like these folks really did their homework.

It's nasty, but I have to respect their skills. I'll bet it works, quite often.

LoganDark• 49 minutes ago

Their "skills" might just be borrowed from some LLM.

throw_m239339• 44 minutes ago

Yeah, this scam is probably all automated at first place. Welcome to the "agent era"...

ChrisMarshallNY3• 25 minutes ago

I dunno. The Norks seem to be really good at this, and have been, for a long time.

I suspect it's clever, experienced, engineers, leveraging LLMs.

CITIZENDOT4• 43 minutes ago

yea, i had fun looking around, this felt like a ctf challenge lol. if they had any vuln on their server, it would've been even better.

gtowey2• 47 minutes ago

My takeaway from this is that I should use the same defense as when someone calls you "from you bank". When they reach out directly, go to the real company's site to apply and contact a real recruiter. If you can't validate that the business is legit before, then assume malfeasance.

technion• 38 minutes ago

Companies make this hard, a bit like various email scams where legit company communication comes from seemingly random domains (hello paypal). Often the company is legit, but theres no public contact that knows anything about the recruiter thats working for them.

bombcar• 35 minutes ago

Healthcare companies are the WORST at this - they will send you legitimate email from h34lthc4re.biz with a heart-happy-health.phishing.info link that you HAVE to use - and it's all legit.

paxys• 33 minutes ago

Even if the attempt is legit, going to the company’s website/careers page to try and reach them is pointless. You application will just get lost among the thousands of others. Your best bet is to ask the recruiter to email you and check for a @<company.com> email address. And even if the attempt checks out don’t run untrusted code on your machine.

yieldcrv• 27 minutes ago

it was in this moment, that gtowey’s outdated job solutions transitioned them from unc to boomer

gtowey2• 12 minutes ago

I think you misunderstood.

I'm not talking about switching to cold contacting companies as a job hunting strategy. I'm saying if you get a suspicious outreach from a rando on linked in on behalf of a company THEN you only continue if you can reach out to the same person via official company channels.

ge96• 46 minutes ago

There was a funny video I saw recently someone's running Red Star OS on their computer and a scammer is trying to scam them thinking it's Windows

Unrelated to this git pre commit hook attack but yeah

rdksu• 42 minutes ago

Bruh the harry potter theme song scared the shit out of me as it turned itself on. Bad UX for a personal site. Great article btw !

CITIZENDOT4• 36 minutes ago

sorry, i added it to set the mood for my site :') yk, like moving lamps at the top, hanging dementor at the right side (only visible on desktops).

should i remove it?

ikistuach• 35 minutes ago

yes

eightysixfour• 32 minutes ago

No, it made me laugh.

john_strinlai• 25 minutes ago

should i remove it?

there is no place for fun, whimsy, moods, or personalization on the web. sorry.

(no, at least not at the request of random internet stranger #10545346)

Lammy• 24 minutes ago

Middle ground: make it respect `prefers-reduced-motion` :)

seanobannon• 21 minutes ago

absolutely not! it is a delightful source of whimsy on an increasingly uniform web

projektfu• 13 minutes ago

No, it's your playground. My podcast was talking about the music the guest was making and I thought he was playing something Potter related.

aftbit• 7 minutes ago

I used developer tools to delete the dementor, then I muted the site when it started playing music.

ladybro• 29 minutes ago

Where can one be whimsical and fun if not for a personal site?

nphardon• 37 minutes ago

always a good day when we get an a post on front actually related to hacking on hackernews.

wxw• 31 minutes ago

They embedded a script that checks the victim’s host operating system and silently executes a remote payload.

Seems like this is becoming a recurring theme, similar story was on the front page last month.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48546294

guessmyname• 25 minutes ago

[…] and silently executes a remote payload

Silently only because @OP is not running Little Snitch (or the equivalent on Windows/Linux).

I’m in the habit of running `tree -a` or the more modern `erd --hidden` but in this case I wouldn’t have needed to, and I wouldn’t have had to audit the scripts either. Little Snitch would have popped up an alert the moment cURL tried to reach that remote server, which is obviously suspicious, and I would have ended the “interview” right there.

darth_avocado2• 15 minutes ago

If LinkedIn actually cared about preventing scams, they could implement verification using company emails if you want to list your current employment. And if it is too much of a heavy burden, then at the minimum you should have it as an optional feature that recruiters would have to comply with, if they want to be legitimate.

CITIZENDOT4• 7 minutes ago

they could implement verification using company emails

they added this back in 2023 (https://news.linkedin.com/2023/april/linkedin-s-new-verifica...), but very less people actually bother to verify with their email, so not having it doesn't always mean it's illegitimate.

darth_avocado2• 4 minutes ago

The legitimate recruiters should start using it then.

lantry• 12 minutes ago

Side note: Why use a raw IP address? If anything, this screams “malware.” At least register a decoy domain like lint-checker.com or jenkins-ci-runner.net. If the threat actors who wrote this are reading: take notes people!

Maybe they don't want to give any identifying info to the domain registrar? Or just minimizing their online presence?

CITIZENDOT4• 3 minutes ago

fair point

sailfast• 3 minutes ago

[delayed]

I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

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