Japanese-Royal: Environment Harvesting and JavaScript RAT Delivered via Fake Developer Interview
“He came as a messenger with gifts, and the birds grew fat.” Executive Summary A threat actor operating a fake recruiter persona on LinkedIn approached developers with a CTO-level opportunity at a fabricated Japanese e-commerce company. After establishing credibility through a polished project brief, the actor shared a GitHub repository named Japanese-Royal as part of a technical interview, directing the target to review and run the codebase. The repository contained a multi-stage implant reachable through several routine developer actions, including VS Code folder-open tasks, npm lifecycle hooks, normal startup scripts, and direct server execution. ...