Cybersecurity researchers have warned about malicious images sent to the official “checkmarks/kix” Docker Hub repository.
In an alert published today, software supply chain security company Socket revealed that unknown threat actors managed to overwrite existing tags, including v2.1.20 and Alpine, while also introducing a new v2.1.21 tag that is not compliant with the official release. The Docker repository has been archived as of writing.
“Analysis of the poisoned image indicates that the bundled KICS binary was modified to include data collection and exfiltration capabilities that are not present in the legitimate version,” Sockett said.
“Malware can generate an uncensored scan report, encrypt it, and send it to an external endpoint, creating a serious risk for teams using KICS to scan infrastructure-as-code files that may contain credentials or other sensitive configuration data.”
Further analysis of the incident revealed that related Checkmarks developer tooling may also be affected, such as recent Microsoft Visual Studio Code extension releases that come with malicious code to download and run remote addons via the Bun runtime.
“This behavior appeared in versions 1.17.0 and 1.19.0, was removed in 1.18.0, and relied on hardcoded GitHub URLs to fetch and run additional JavaScript without user confirmation or integrity verification,” Socket said.
Organizations that may have used the affected KICS image to scan Terraform, CloudFormation, or Kubernetes configurations should consider any secrets or credentials exposed in those scans as potentially compromised.
“Evidence suggests that this is not an isolated Docker Hub incident, but rather part of a broader supply chain compromise affecting multiple Checkmark distribution channels,” the company said.
Hacker News has contacted Checkmarks for more information, and we will update the story if we hear back.
(This is a developing story. Please check back for more details.)
