GitHub confirms breach after hackers put stolen source code up for sale
GitHub, the world’s largest code hosting platform used by over 100 million developers, has confirmed a data breach, and the attackers are selling the stolen data online.
GitHub, the world’s largest code hosting platform used by over 100 million developers, has confirmed a data breach, and the attackers are selling the stolen data online.
- GitHub confirmed that attackers gained unauthorized access to its internal repositories after an employee's device was compromised through a poisoned Visual Studio Code extension.
- The threat actor group TeamPCP claimed to be selling the stolen source code on a prominent hacker forum.
- The attackers claim to have exfiltrated approximately 3,800 internal repositories containing source code and internal organization data tied to GitHub's main platform, a figure GitHub says is "directionally consistent" with its own investigation.
- GitHub says there is currently no evidence that customer repositories hosted on the platform were compromised, as the breach was limited to GitHub's own internal repositories.
- Even without customer data exposure, the breach poses serious supply chain risks because leaked internal repositories could reveal operational tooling, internal APIs, authentication workflows, and infrastructure configurations that attackers could exploit in future attacks.
- The breach is tied to TeamPCP, the same group behind the Shai-Hulud malware that targets developer environments, and follows a wave of NPM package hijackings that have been hammering GitHub.
The company first acknowledged the cyber incident in a brief statement posted on X on May 20th.
“We are investigating unauthorized access to GitHub’s internal repositories,” the company wrote.
Hours later, GitHub published additional details confirming that attackers gained unauthorized access to its internal repositories after compromising an employee's device through a poisoned Visual Studio Code extension.
“Yesterday we detected and contained a compromise of an employee device involving a poisoned VS Code extension,” GitHub stated.
“We removed the malicious extension version, isolated the endpoint, and began incident response immediately.”
GitHub says it moved quickly to rotate secrets after detecting the intrusion.
GitHub’s source code on sale
The stolen GitHub data has been listed on the prominent hacker forum by a threat actor under the name TeamPCP.
The threat actor stated in a post that the stolen data includes source code and internal organization data tied to GitHub’s main platform.
“The attacker's current claims of ~3,800 repositories are directionally consistent with our investigation so far," GitHub wrote.
The post on the underground marketplace indicates the attackers' financial motive.
"As always, this is not a ransom," the threat actor said in a post.
"We do not care about extorting GitHub, 1 buyer and we shred the data on our end. It looks like our retirement is soon so if no buyer is found, we leak it for free."
TeamPCP posted a list of allegedly exfiltrated repositories and 2 sample code files.
No customer repositories affected
At the moment, GitHub says there is no evidence that customer repositories hosted on the platform were compromised. The company emphasized that the affected repositories were internal to GitHub itself.
“While we currently have no evidence of impact to customer information stored outside of GitHub’s internal repositories, we are closely monitoring our infrastructure for follow-on activity,” the company stated.
Still, the implications could be serious. GitHub sits at the center of the global software supply chain, hosting code and infrastructure used by millions of developers and enterprises worldwide.
Even limited access to internal repositories could expose operational tooling, internal APIs, authentication workflows, or infrastructure configurations that could be useful for future attacks.
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"Since TeamPCP is the group behind Shai-Hulud malware that was recently thriving and which targets dev environments broadly speaking, it was a matter of time before something like this would happen," said the Cybernews research team.
"More similar incidents can occur at this time, especially when it comes to GitHub integrations with other tools, such as Copilot. Even if the credentials were rotated, exposed source code increases the risk of finding more fresh vulnerabilities," the team added.
GitHub is a constant target
The current GitHub breach claims follow a spree of NPM package attacks. TeamPCP recently hijacked one maintainer's account and conducted a string of software supply chain attacks targeting open-source packages.
Researchers detected hundreds of compromised NPM packages with hackers using stolen secrets to create over 2,200 public GitHub repositories.
Since February, there have been ongoing automated attacks on GitHub with a Claude-powered AI bot posing as a "security researcher." The bot launched an unprecedented hacking spree, compromising major repositories belonging to Microsoft, Datadog, and Aqua Security (Trivy).
GitHub is also on the radar of state-sponsored threat actors. North Korean threat actors are reportedly escalating their attacks on the developer community through a campaign dubbed "Fake Font."
This is a new variant of the long-running "Contagious Interview" operation that hides malware inside seemingly legitimate GitHub repositories and exploits Visual Studio Code's task automation to execute it.
The multi-stage infection chain ultimately deploys a Python-based backdoor capable of stealing credentials from over a dozen crypto wallet extensions, harvesting browser credentials, logging keystrokes, and hijacking clipboard cryptocurrency addresses across Windows, macOS, and Linux.
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