'Cordyceps': Mushrooming Malicious Pull Requests Threaten Developer Workflows
Malicious pull requests targeting open-source projects exploit CI/CD workflow weaknesses.
A new threat, dubbed 'Cordyceps,' leverages malicious pull requests to compromise open-source projects by exploiting weaknesses in CI/CD workflows. This attack vector has already impacted significant projects including Microsoft's Azure Sentinel, Google's AI Agent Development Kit, Apache Doris, Cloudflare Workers SDK, and Python's Black formatter.
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The lesson from this incident
Full lessonThe 'Cordyceps' threat exploits weaknesses in CI/CD pipeline configurations to inject malicious code through seemingly legitimate pull requests, compromising major open-source projects before maintainers can review them. The root cause lies in overly permissive automation workflows that execute untrusted code from external contributors without adequate sandboxing or approval gates. This matters because a single compromised open-source dependency can cascade downstream to thousands of organizations relying on those projects. The attack demonstrates how supply chain threats have evolved beyond tampering with packages to directly subverting the development and build process itself.
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- Software supply chain security
Malicious and vulnerable open-source packages are caught before they ship.