A GitHub Actions credential-theft campaign that researchers first flagged a year ago has returned with a fresh wave of attacks, hitting 772 public repositories between August 31 and September 30, 2026, and going after more than 2,500 developer secrets in the process.
The campaign, named GhostAction, was first reported in September 2025 after attackers compromised 817 public repositories across 327 GitHub user accounts and walked off with at least 3,325 secrets. It relied on injecting a malicious GitHub Actions workflow into victim repositories using what appeared to be stolen developer credentials. The 2026 wave uses the exact same method.
The attack injects a workflow file named `github_actions_security.yml` with the commit message "Add Github Actions Security workflow." Instead of dumping an entire environment, the attacker hardcodes into the workflow the specific secret names it already found referenced in the target's legitimate workflows, then sends those values in a single HTTP POST request to an attacker-controlled server.
The only meaningful change from 2025 is the exfiltration destination. This wave routes stolen data over plain HTTP to a bare IP address, `193.32.204.199`, replacing the named domains used previously. On September 7, a second variant appeared across seven repositories under the filename `security-check.yml`, posting secrets to a dedicated API endpoint on the same server with a unique identifier per injection. The tracking mechanism suggests the attacker now runs a backend that logs exactly which repository each stolen secret came from.
Three Bursts, 2,577 Targets
The injections rolled out in clusters. On August 31, 143 repositories were hit. Between September 2 and 5, roughly 400 more were targeted, with a single-day peak of 294 on September 5. On September 15, another 103 repositories were injected, with smaller activity continuing through the rest of the month.
Across all 772 repositories, the workflows targeted 2,577 secrets. SSH private keys and deployment server credentials were the most sought-after, appearing in 446 cases. Azure credentials followed at 218, with one organization alone exposing an Azure personal access token and an SSH key across 92 repositories. Container registry credentials for DockerHub and GHCR appeared 142 times; database credentials, 112; AWS access keys, 106; FTP credentials, 92; Google Cloud and Firebase credentials, 80; and GitHub tokens, 66. The list also included API keys for Telegram bots, Slack, Discord, npm, PyPI, and various AI providers.
GitHub's own approval mechanisms blunted much of the damage. Of 3,669 workflow runs tracked across 605 repositories, only 499 actually ran. A total of 336 completed successfully, exfiltrating 26 secrets from 13 repositories. Only 124 of the 772 affected repositories, roughly 16 percent, showed evidence of cleanup by October 5.
A Campaign That Never Stopped
Calling this a revival would be misleading. In 92 of the 2026 cases, the attacker did not add a new workflow at all. It modified one already sitting in the repository from an earlier injection, with the commit message "Update Github Actions Security workflow." Those updates simply pointed existing files at the new exfiltration IP, with the replaced endpoints including the original 2025 domains and a previously undocumented address, `170.39.218.2`.
The full timeline runs from September 2025 through the present: roughly 900 repositories in the initial wave, quieter activity across late 2025 and early 2026 under two different endpoints, then the August and September 2026 surge of 772.
A Cryptominer Hidden in DevOpsGPT
The new wave also produced an unexpected finding. A day and a half before the first August 31 injections, a commit labeled "fix(subtask): update the OpenAI version" was pushed to `kuafuai/DevOpsGPT`, an open-source project with roughly 6,000 stars. The commit embedded an XMRig 6.21.0 Monero miner into the project's Docker image, disguised as a routine worker process and set to run on a 45-second restart loop. The mining configuration was XOR-encrypted with the key `devops2024`, and the wallet pointed to `pool.supportxmr.com`.
The same compromised account was then used on September 15 to push the GhostAction workflow to four DevOpsGPT repositories. Whether the miner and the credential-theft campaign share the same operators remains unclear. The miner commit used a forged author email never seen on that account before, was crafted specifically for that project, and left no trace in any other repository, while GhostAction's payloads are generic and hit hundreds of repos within hours.
One Compromised Account, Multiple Attackers
Cross-referencing GhostAction victims against other malicious GitHub activity turned up 13 victim repositories that had also been exploited for cryptomining by at least four separate campaigns with distinct wallets, pools, and infrastructure. In some cases the miners arrived before the GhostAction workflow; in others they followed months later.
The most likely explanation is that the credentials GhostAction used were not exclusive to its operators. Stolen developer tokens circulate through infostealer logs and credential markets, where multiple actors can buy and reuse the same access independently.
That creates a specific gap in the standard remediation advice. Rotating the secrets stolen through the malicious workflow is necessary, but it is not enough. The underlying GitHub credential that allowed the injection in the first place also needs to be found and revoked, or whoever holds that token next will use it.
The campaign continued into October. On October 8, a new burst hit 346 repositories in two automated sweeps lasting only minutes. Two compromised maintainer accounts pushed the workflow to every repository they could write to, including kitao/pyxel, a Python retro game engine with over 18,400 stars, and uber/athenadriver. The exfiltration endpoint remained `193.32.204.199`. Unlike most of the September wave, which was blocked pending approval, these runs executed and exfiltration was confirmed. This variant also goes further than its predecessor: rather than targeting only named GitHub Actions secrets, it combs the full git commit history for cloud credentials, including AWS keys, GitHub and GitLab tokens, and API keys for services like OpenAI and Anthropic.
