Fake OpenAI Code Repository Tops Hugging Face Trending List Before Being Removed, Contains Spyware

On May 13, according to Decrypt, a fake repository impersonating OpenAI's privacy filter topped the trending list on Hugging Face. It was removed after receiving approximately 244,000 downloads and 667 likes in 18 hours. Security firm HiddenLayer discovered that 657 of the likes came from bot accounts. The malicious repository contained a six-stage information-stealing program: it disabled security detection through the loader.py script, silently executed PowerShell, and then downloaded the final payload written in Rust to run with SYSTEM privileges. The malware steals passwords from Chrome and Firefox, cryptocurrency wallet seed phrases, SSH keys, FTP credentials, and Discord tokens. It also takes screenshots and sends them to the attacker's server, while detecting virtual machine environments to evade analysis. HiddenLayer also found six other malicious repositories using the same infrastructure, impersonating models such as Qwen3, DeepSeek, and Bonsai.