NICKEL ALLEY strategy: Fake it 'til you make it
Sophos CTU researchers document NICKEL ALLEY (North Korean state-sponsored threat group) conducting sustained social engineering campaigns targeting software developers through fake job postings, LinkedIn profiles, and GitHub repositories. The group delivers PyLangGhost RAT and BeaverTail malware via ClickFix tactics, malicious npm packages, and VS Code task automation, with primary objectives of cryptocurrency theft and supply-chain compromise. Active campaigns observed throughout 2025 demonstrate the group's operational maturity and infrastructure agility, leveraging Vercel for payload hosting and rotating staging domains.