A recent blog by developer David Dodda describes how he was almost hacked — not through a phishing email or fake app, but through what appeared to be a legitimate coding interview.

💻 The Setup

  • David was approached on LinkedIn by someone claiming to be a Chief Blockchain Officer at a well-known company.
  • Everything looked authentic — the company page, the recruiter’s profile, even the take-home assignment.
  • He received a React/Node codebase on Bitbucket with clean documentation and a tight deadline — just like a real interview task. But before running the code, he decided to scan it.
  • Hidden inside the repo was obfuscated malicious code capable of stealing credentials, wallet data, and environment variables.

🎭 The Attack Pattern

This was not random malware — it was a socially engineered scam mimicking a real hiring process.

  • Credible-looking LinkedIn profile
  • Company with an active page
  • Familiar tech stack (React, Node)
  • Timed task to create urgency
  • Malicious logic hidden inside “legit” code

The code used obfuscation and dynamic execution to pull a remote payload that self-deleted after execution — leaving almost no trace.

🧩 The Three-Step Kill Chain

  1. Evasion via Obfuscation: The payload URL was hidden as a byte array (e.g., [104,116,116,112,115,…]) — a classic evasion trick that bypasses basic static analysis tools. The URL was only decoded at runtime.

  2. Establishing C2 Channel: Once decoded, it made an axios.get call to the attacker’s server, establishing a Command and Control (C2) connection to fetch the malicious payload.

  3. Remote Code Execution: The retrieved code was executed using: new Function(“require”, response.data.model)(require);

This gave full runtime privileges — enabling data theft, session hijacking, and deeper system compromise.

🔒 The Broader Lesson

This incident highlights how modern threats 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗳𝗹𝗮𝘄𝘀. The weakness lies in the 𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗶𝗻 — not just in individual systems.

Attackers can inject malicious code into obscure, low-profile libraries or plausible-looking repositories to gain high-leverage access.

Organizations must consider every external dependency as a potential threat vector. Zero Trust is no longer optional for code dependencies.

#SupplyChainSecurity #AppSec #CyberSecurity #DevSecOps #ZeroTrust #WomenInTech

Reference:

How I Almost Got Hacked By A ‘Job Interview’