We believe that there is an ongoing campaign targeting rust-lang members and owners of popular crates that is attempting to compromise devices and accounts in order to use them to publish malware.

What we've seen

A video call is set up for something positive — maybe for a job, maybe for a project, maybe for a contract opportunity — and then that's used as a vector to either get the target to install something on their computer (such as a purportedly missing audio codec) or execute another command (for example, via putting a command on the clipboard).

These attackers are setting up new but legitimate seeming company profiles, including plausible LinkedIn presences, in order to pass cursory inspection.

What you can do

Please take extra care in the near term. Be appropriately suspicious of cold outreaches, and ensure that any calls you have with new people are on platforms you trust — ideally, try to be the one who sets up the call on a platform you already use.

Please also re-check that your accounts look normal: MFA enabled, no unexpected logins on platforms that can track that, and so on.

If you have any concerns about your accounts, please reach out to help@crates.io (for crates.io account concerns) and/or security@rust-lang.org (for any other concerns). We're very happy to help.