GemStuffer Campaign Abuses RubyGems as Exfiltration Channel Targeting UK Local Government

Socket's threat research team is tracking a suspicious RubyGems campaign we’re calling GemStuffer, involving more than 100 gems that appear to use the RubyGems registry as a data transport mechanism rather than a conventional malware distribution channel. The packages do not appear designed for mass developer compromise. Many have little or no download activity, and the payloads are repetitive, noisy, and unusually self-contained. Instead, the scripts fetch pages from UK local government…