Suspicious TruffleHog Secret Scanner Spawned by Node Package Manager on Linux

ATT&CK techniques

Cred Access

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
- T1552.001Credentials In Files
- T1552.005Cloud Instance Metadata API
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the TruffleHog secret scanning tool being launched as a child of a node or npm process which the Shai-Hulud npm worm abuses during package install to locate GitHub npm and cloud credentials on the victim host. Running a credential scanner from within a package install lifecycle is anomalous and indicates automated secret theft rather than a developer audit.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1552.001 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Cloud Instance Metadata Access via Command Line Tool

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Suspicious prt-scan Campaign Credential Harvesting via proc environ Scan (via process_creation)

Suspicious Shai-Hulud 2.0 Harvested Secret Dump File Creation

Suspicious TruffleHog Execution Spawned by Bun Runtime via Process Creation

Malicious AWS Credential Exfiltration via Curl or Wget in Process Creation

Suspicious sqlite3 Access to gcloud Cached Access Token Database (via process_creation)

Suspicious AWS GetCallerIdentity From TruffleHog User Agent via Cloudtrail

Suspicious GitHub CLI Auth Token Extraction via Command Line

Suspicious TruffleHog Secret Scanner Spawned by Node Package Manager on Linux

Pivot detection · T1552.001 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

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