GitHub Confirms Signing Certificates Stolen in Cyber-Attack, Revokes Them

GitHub confirmed on Monday that danger actors stole a few electronic certificates utilised for its Desktop and Atom programs through a cyber-attack in December 2022.

Writing in a blog post, the firm also said that after investigating the accident, it concluded there was no risk to GitHub.com companies and no unauthorized variations to the jobs.

“A set of encrypted code signing certificates have been exfiltrated on the other hand, the certificates were password-guarded, and we have no evidence of malicious use,” reads the publish by Alexis Wales, GitHub’s vice president of security operations.

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“As a preventative evaluate, we will revoke the exposed certificates applied for the GitHub Desktop and Atom applications. Revoking these certificates will invalidate some versions of GitHub Desktop for Mac and Atom.”

Additional exclusively, various versions of GitHub Desktop for Mac in between 3..2 and 3.1.2 will cease operating on February 02, even though GitHub Desktop for Windows will not be afflicted. As for the Atom text editor, versions 1.63. and 1.63.1 will cease performing.

To continue utilizing the software alternatives, GitHub urged Mac consumers to up grade the GitHub Desktop model to the latest release. In distinction, Atom buyers ought to obtain a prior application edition to preserve doing work on it.

“The security and trustworthiness of GitHub and the broader developer ecosystem is our optimum priority,” Wales added. “We recommend people acquire motion on the previously mentioned suggestions to continue working with GitHub Desktop and Atom.”

According to Kevin Bocek, VP of security tactic and risk intelligence at Venafi, revoking the certificates is a smart shift, as threat actors may possibly use them to masquerade their software package as coming from GitHub.

“In the improper arms, these device identities could be utilized to pose as trusted […]. This is the potent weapon that can help source chain attacks on other software program builders and unidentified attainable subsequent (or past) attacks,” Bocek told Infosecurity in an email.

“To shield towards gatherings such as these, which are getting progressively widespread, security engineering groups need to deploy a control airplane for automating equipment id management.”

The GitHub disclosure arrives weeks just after the business launched a new element to set up automatic code scanning on repositories.