AI startup Mercor confirms security incident linked to LiteLLM supply chain attack

AI recruiting startup Mercor has confirmed it was affected by a security incident, which appears to be linked to a supply chain attack targeting the open-source project LiteLLM. The company stated it was one of thousands of organizations impacted by the compromise. This confirmation follows claims by the extortion hacking group Lapsus$ that it had targeted Mercor and accessed its data, according to a recent report by TechCrunch.

The incident at Mercor is believed to stem from malicious code injected into the LiteLLM project, an open-source tool used by numerous companies to manage AI model interactions. A hacking group known as TeamPCP has been linked to this compromise. While Mercor is investigating the full extent of the breach with third-party experts, the group Lapsus$ has claimed responsibility and released a sample of data allegedly stolen from Mercor, including Slack and ticketing information. It is unclear how Lapsus$ obtained this data in relation to the TeamPCP attack on LiteLLM.