{"id":240135,"date":"2026-07-02T02:33:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T07:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/new-chocopoc-malware-targets-researchers-via-trojanized-poc-exploits"},"modified":"2026-07-02T02:33:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T07:33:29","slug":"new-chocopoc-malware-targets-researchers-via-trojanized-poc-exploits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/new-chocopoc-malware-targets-researchers-via-trojanized-poc-exploits","title":{"rendered":"New ChocoPoC malware targets researchers via trojanized PoC exploits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-chocopoc-malware-targets-researchers-via-trojanized-poc-exploits2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Multiple weaponized proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits on GitHub were found delivering a Python-based remote access trojan (RAT) named ChocoPoC that can execute commands and steal sensitive data in a campaign believed to target cybersecurity researchers.<\/p>\n<p>Hiding malware in PoC exploits for various vulnerabilities <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bleepingcomputer.com\/news\/security\/thousands-of-github-repositories-deliver-fake-poc-exploits-with-malware\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">is not new<\/a>, as there are examples of threat actors posing as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bleepingcomputer.com\/news\/security\/fake-zero-day-poc-exploits-on-github-push-windows-linux-malware\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">real security researchers<\/a> and taking advantage of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bleepingcomputer.com\/news\/security\/fake-winrar-proof-of-concept-exploit-drops-venomrat-malware\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">trending vulnerabilities<\/a> to target vulnerability and penetration testers or low-skilled hackers.<\/p>\n<p>However, ChocoPoC stands out for not embedding the malware directly in the exploit file but for adding malicious Python packages to the PoC\u2019s dependency list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Multiple weaponized proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits on GitHub were found delivering a Python-based remote access trojan (RAT) named ChocoPoC that can execute commands and steal sensitive data in a campaign believed to target cybersecurity researchers. Hiding malware in PoC exploits for various vulnerabilities is not new, as there are examples of threat actors posing as real [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}