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Cyber Attack & Data Breach · securityweek.com

OpenAI Says It Was Affected by North Korea-Linked Axios Supply Chain Attack

· Original article ↗

Summary

OpenAI says its macOS app-signing workflow executed malicious Axios 1.14.1 and could access signing materials. The company believes its certificate was not compromised but is revoking and rotating it as a precaution.

Key points

  • Attackers reportedly compromised an Axios maintainer’s NPM account and published two malicious packages that could install a cross-platform RAT.
  • OpenAI said a GitHub Actions workflow for macOS app signing downloaded and executed malicious Axios 1.14.1.
  • The workflow had access to certificate and notarization materials used to sign ChatGPT Desktop, Codex, Codex-cli, and Atlas.
  • OpenAI said it believes the signing certificate was not compromised, but is revoking and rotating it as a precaution.
  • OpenAI stopped new notarizations with the old certificate; it said macOS protections would block new downloads and launches signed with it after full revocation on May 8, 2026.
  • Huntress reported evidence of compromise on 135 machines, while Wiz observed the malicious version executed in 3% of affected environments.

Article Details

Victim Organization
OpenAI
Incident Type
Supply-chain compromise involving a malicious version of the Axios NPM package, which was downloaded and executed by an OpenAI GitHub Actions workflow.
Operational Impact
A macOS app-signing workflow with access to certificate and notarization material executed malicious Axios version 1.14.1. OpenAI said it believed the certificate had not been compromised, but revoked and rotated it as a precaution. The article reports no confirmed data theft or service disruption.
Claim Status
confirmed

MITRE ATT&CK

T1195.002 · Compromise Software Supply ChainAttackers compromised an Axios maintainer's NPM account and published malicious packages, compromising a software supply chain.

Threat Actors

UNC1069Described as the North Korean threat group linked to the campaign. Cybersecurity experts attributed the supply-chain attack to North Korean hackers; the article does not establish UNC1069's responsibility as confirmed.

Products

AxiosOpenAI revealed on Friday that it’s one of many organizations affected by the recent Axios supply chain attack, which cybersecurity experts have attributed to North Korean hackers.GitHub Actions“A GitHub Actions workflow we use in the macOS app-signing process downloaded and executed a malicious version of Axios (version 1.14.1),” OpenAI explained. “This workflow had access to a certificate and notarization

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