Skip to main content

OSINT - CircleCI incident report for January 4, 2023 security incident

Medium
Published: Thu Jan 19 2023 (01/19/2023, 00:00:00 UTC)
Source: CIRCL OSINT Feed
Vendor/Project: type
Product: osint

Description

OSINT - CircleCI incident report for January 4, 2023 security incident

AI-Powered Analysis

AILast updated: 07/05/2025, 22:54:55 UTC

Technical Analysis

The provided information pertains to an OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) report regarding a security incident involving CircleCI on January 4, 2023. CircleCI is a widely used continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) platform that automates software build, test, and deployment processes. The incident is tagged with the MITRE ATT&CK technique T1021.004, which corresponds to the use of SSH for lateral movement or remote access. This suggests that the threat involved unauthorized or malicious use of SSH connections, potentially to deliver payloads or drop artifacts within compromised environments. However, the report lacks detailed technical specifics such as the exact nature of the vulnerability exploited, the attack vector, or the scope of the compromise. No affected versions or patches are indicated, and no known exploits in the wild have been reported. The certainty of the information is moderate (50%), and the severity is assessed as medium by the source. The incident likely involved attackers leveraging SSH access to move laterally or execute payloads within CircleCI environments or related infrastructure, which could lead to unauthorized code execution or data exposure. The absence of patch information and known exploits suggests this may have been an operational security incident or a targeted attack rather than a widespread vulnerability exploitation.

Potential Impact

For European organizations using CircleCI or integrating it into their DevOps pipelines, this incident highlights potential risks related to unauthorized access and lateral movement via SSH within their CI/CD environments. Compromise of CircleCI infrastructure could lead to injection of malicious code into software builds, resulting in supply chain attacks that propagate malware or backdoors into production systems. This could impact confidentiality by exposing sensitive source code or credentials, integrity by altering build artifacts, and availability if CI/CD pipelines are disrupted. Given the central role of CI/CD in modern software development, such an incident could have cascading effects on operational continuity and trust in software releases. Organizations in Europe relying on CircleCI should be aware of these risks, especially those in regulated sectors such as finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, where software integrity and security are paramount.

Mitigation Recommendations

European organizations should implement strict SSH access controls within their CI/CD environments, including the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all SSH connections and limiting SSH access to trusted IP addresses or VPNs. Regularly audit and monitor SSH logs and CircleCI activity for anomalous behavior indicative of lateral movement or unauthorized payload delivery. Employ role-based access controls (RBAC) within CircleCI to minimize permissions and restrict the ability to execute arbitrary commands or deploy code. Integrate supply chain security measures such as code signing, artifact verification, and dependency scanning to detect tampering. Additionally, organizations should ensure that CircleCI configurations and secrets management follow best practices, including the use of environment variables securely stored and rotated frequently. Since no patches are available, focus should be on detection, containment, and response capabilities, including incident response plans tailored to CI/CD compromise scenarios.

Need more detailed analysis?Get Pro

Technical Details

Uuid
f2049d65-5315-4c37-9bbb-900c9b851204
Original Timestamp
1674116421

Indicators of Compromise

Hash

ValueDescriptionCopy
hash8913e38592228adc067d82f66c150d87004ec946e579d4a00c53b61444ff35bf
Malicious files to search for and remove:

File

ValueDescriptionCopy
file/private/tmp/.svx856.log
Malicious files to search for and remove:
file/private/tmp/.ptslog
Malicious files to search for and remove:
filePTX-Player.dmg
Malicious files to search for and remove:

Regkey

ValueDescriptionCopy
regkeyrepo.download_zip
Review GitHub audit log files for unexpected commands such as:

Ip

ValueDescriptionCopy
ip178.249.214.10
ip178.249.214.25
ip111.90.149.55
ip188.68.229.52
ip72.18.132.58
ip89.36.78.135
ip89.36.78.109
ip89.36.78.75

Domain

ValueDescriptionCopy
domainpotrax.com
Block the following domain
domainptx.app
Malicious files to search for and remove:

Link

ValueDescriptionCopy
linkhttps://circleci.com/blog/jan-4-2023-incident-report/

Text

ValueDescriptionCopy
textOn January 4, 2023, we alerted customers to a security incident. Today, we want to share with you what happened, what we’ve learned, and what our plans are to continuously improve our security posture for the future. We would like to thank our customers for your attention to rotating and revoking secrets, and apologize for any disruption this incident may have caused to your work. We encourage customers who have yet to take action to do so in order to prevent unauthorized access to third-party systems and stores. Additionally, we want to thank our customers and our community for your patience while we have been conducting a thorough investigation. In aiming for responsible disclosure, we have done our best to balance speed in sharing information with maintaining the integrity of our investigation.
textReport

Threat ID: 68359c9f5d5f0974d01fbfcb

Added to database: 5/27/2025, 11:06:07 AM

Last enriched: 7/5/2025, 10:54:55 PM

Last updated: 8/18/2025, 7:41:06 AM

Views: 16

Actions

PRO

Updates to AI analysis are available only with a Pro account. Contact root@offseq.com for access.

Please log in to the Console to use AI analysis features.

External Links

Need enhanced features?

Contact root@offseq.com for Pro access with improved analysis and higher rate limits.

Latest Threats