Hugging Face model repositories used to install PRL miners, Alch-crypto warns

HuoXing Finance reports that Alch-crypto, operator of the POW coin information platform bitgou.org, has posted that PRL has been exploited by cybercriminals. According to Alch-crypto, malicious actors have poisoned models on the model hosting platform Hugging Face, disguising 31 repositories as small Qwen2 models. When users load these models using the trust_remote_code option, they inadvertently install a PRL miner program that disguises itself as a system process; some versions also include backdoors enabling remote control of the machine. Alch-crypto noted that after the first batch of related repositories was removed, the attackers created new accounts and re-uploaded the malicious content, with total downloads exceeding 32,000. The attackers’ initial wallets have already received approximately 2,276 PRL, equivalent to around $5,000 at the time of posting, and they continue to receive payments even after the repositories were deleted. Alch-crypto also advises local model users: do not enable trust_remote_code for models from unknown sources; if GPU utilization spikes abnormally, first check running processes and keep mining devices separate from machines running AI workloads.