OpenAI rotates signing certificate after the Axios compromise

Following the 31 March supply chain attack on the Axios HTTP library on NPM, OpenAI was among those affected. The library was used in a GitHub Actions workflow that signs the macOS applications ChatGPT Desktop, Codex App, Codex CLI and Atlas. OpenAI states there is no evidence of access to user data, system compromise or modified software, but because the signing certificate was present in the workflow, it is being rotated as a precaution. New versions have been released, and the old certificate will be fully revoked on 8 May. After that, versions carrying it will be blocked by macOS security protections.

What this means for your organisation

This is a small, concrete example of how far a single compromised package reaches. A library inside a build step gets whatever that build step has, and signing keys high in the trust chain are among the most valuable things there are. For organisations using these applications there is also a practical deadline: machines not updated by 8 May will find the applications stop launching.

Berigo recommends

• Update the affected OpenAI applications on all Macs before 8 May, so you avoid an outage that looks like a security incident.
• Map which secrets are actually exposed inside your own build pipelines, and remove those that do not need to be there.
• Move signing keys out of the workflow and into a dedicated signing service with its own access control.
• Put key rotation into the incident response plan, so it is a rehearsed action rather than an improvisation.

Source

• openai.com