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Coinbase was primary target of recent GitHub Actions breaches. Researchers have determined that Coinbase was the primary target in a recent GitHub Actions cascading supply chain attack that compromised secrets in hundreds of repositories. According to new reports from Palo Alto Unit 42 and Wiz, the attack was carefully planned and began when malicious code was injected into reviewdog/action-setup@v1 GitHub Action. It is unclear how the breach occurred, but the threat actors modified the action to dump CI/CD secrets and authentication tokens into GitHub Actions logs. As previously reported, the first stage of the breach involved the compromise of the reviewdog/action-setup@v1 GitHub Action. It is unclear how the breach occurred, but when a related GitHub Action, tj-actions/eslint-changed-files, invoked the reviewdog action, causing its secrets to be dumped to workflow logs. This allowed the threat actors to steal a Personal Access Token that was then used to push a malicious commit to the tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action that once again dumps CI/CD secrets to workflow logs. However, this initial commit specifically targeted projects for Coinbase and another user named "mmvojwip," an account belonging to the attacker. The changed-files action was used by over 20,000 other projects, including Coinbase's coinbase/agent kit, a popular framework for allowing AI agents to interact with blockchains. According to Unit 42, Coinbase's agentkit workflow executed the changed-files actions, allowing the threat actors to steal tokens that gave them Write access to the repository. "The attacker obtained a GitHub token with write permissions to the coinbase/agentkit repository on March 14, 2025, 15:10 UTC, less than two hours before the larger attack was initiated against tj-actions/changed-files," explained Palo Alto Unit 42. However, Coinbase later told Unit 42 that the attack was unsuccessful and did not impact any of their assets. "We followed up by sharing more details of our findings with Coinbase, which stated that the attack was unsuccessful at causing any damage to the agentkit project, or any other Coinbase asset," reports Palo Alto Unit 42. Unit 42 and Wiz's reports confirm that the campaign was initially highly focused on Coinbase and expanded to all projects utilizing tj-actions/changed-files once their initial attempt failed. While 23,000 projects utilized the changed-files action, only 218 repositories were ultimately impacted by the breach. BleepingComputer also contacted Coinbase about the incident but has not received a reply to our questions. Top 10 MITRE ATT&CK© Techniques Behind 93% of Attacks Based on an analysis of 14M malicious actions, discover the top 10 MITRE ATT&CK techniques behind 93% of attacks and how to defend against them.

Daily Brief Summary

CYBERCRIME // Coinbase Targeted in GitHub Actions Supply Chain Attack

Researchers from Palo Alto Unit 42 and Wiz identified a GitHub Actions supply chain attack primarily targeting Coinbase.

The attackers injected malicious code into the reviewdog/action-setup@v1 GitHub Action to compromise CI/CD secrets and authentication tokens.

The breach allowed threat actors to steal a Personal Access Token and push a harmful commit to another GitHub Action, tj-actions/changed-files.

This attack dumped more CI/CD secrets into workflow logs and targeted over 20,000 projects, although only 218 repositories were ultimately affected.

Coinbase's agentkit project, which enables AI interaction with blockchains, was specifically targeted, though the attack was ultimately unsuccessful against Coinbase assets.

The compromised GitHub action was used initially to target Coinbase and expanded to other projects when initial attempts failed.

Coinbase confirmed the attack did not cause any damage or loss to their assets after being alerted by the Palo Alto Unit 42 team.