The serpent’s tongue: Luring the Python out of its den
Summary: Cisco Talos reports that GitHub's 2025 security data shows a 69% year-over-year increase in published malware advisories, with 17% of all reviewed advisories in the GitHub Advisory Database now tied to the Pip ecosystem. The write-up describes how Python packages can establish a foothold through installation alone, via mechanisms such as setup.py executing automatically, .pth files running on every Python invocation, and sitecustomize/usercustomize hooks, and notes the TeamPCP group's supply chain compromise of the litellm package.
What you should know: Malicious packages are typically pulled from public repositories within hours, but payload execution can happen within minutes of install and exfiltration within an hour, with recent trends showing nine days of dwell time once compromised. The targets are developers who often hold administrative rights across endpoints, source code repositories, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud infrastructure.
Read the original at Cisco Talos ↗
- Topics
- Supply Chain & AppSec
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