A large-scale malware campaign called 'FakeGit' has distributed SmartLoader and StealC malware through 7,600 malicious GitHub repositories, accumulating over 14 million downloads. The campaign impersonates popular tools like Gmail, WhatsApp, Docker, and Jenkins with convincing fake documentation and fabricated stars. Over 800 repositories posed as AI skills or MCP servers and appeared in public AI registries, using a technique researchers call 'AgentBaiting' — designed to get AI coding agents like Claude Code, ChatGPT, and Gemini to surface and recommend the malicious repos. SmartLoader establishes persistence via scheduled tasks, retrieves its C2 address through a Polygon smart contract, and ultimately delivers the StealC information stealer. Organizations are advised to maintain approved MCP server catalogs, test in isolated environments, and rotate secrets if SmartLoader execution is suspected.
