al-ice.ai

Google Sites — Fake Claude Code and Codex Installer Phishing Campaign

Security by al-ice.ai Editorial

AI relevance: Attackers are impersonating AI developer tools (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) on trusted hosting platforms to deliver credential-stealing payloads targeting AI toolchains, API keys, and developer infrastructure.

  • A malware campaign uses Google Sites-hosted pages designed to look like official Claude Code and OpenAI Codex installer landing pages, tricking developers into running a malicious command that exfiltrates credentials.
  • The pages impersonate legitimate product install flows, leveraging Google Sites' trusted domain to bypass URL reputation checks and security tooling.
  • The malicious command harvests API keys, passwords, and crypto wallet credentials from the victim's machine once executed.
  • This follows a broader pattern of AI-branded phishing: separate campaigns simultaneously impersonate ChatGPT, Claude, and DeepSeek to steal logins, card data, and tokens via fake links and files.
  • The campaign complements the ongoing Shai-Hulud / Hades / Miasma supply-chain attack wave that has poisoned 170+ npm and PyPI packages, targeting the same developer credential sets (Anthropic keys, AWS, GCP, Azure, GitHub, K8s, SSH, .env files, Claude/MCP configs).

Why it matters

The use of Google Sites for distribution is a social-engineering upgrade: trusted infrastructure (Google domains, Google hosting) makes phishing pages harder to flag with traditional URL reputation systems. As AI coding tools become ubiquitous, threat actors are pivoting from generic developer impersonation to AI-specific bait that preys on the rush to adopt Claude Code, Codex, and other agentic tooling.

What to do

  • Always verify AI tool installer URLs against official vendor documentation (anthropic.com, openai.com) — never trust Google Sites or other third-party hosting for installers.
  • Inspect any one-liner install commands before executing; malicious payloads often embed credential exfiltration in apparently innocuous shell scripts.
  • Rotate API keys and tokens immediately if you have run an unverified installer command.
  • Use browser extensions or enterprise URL allow-listing to block Google Sites impersonation pages.

Sources