> Why do they only clone new repositories, rather than popular ones? > Why do they delete a commit and push a new one every few hours?

Because this is not targetted to humans. It's targetted to agents. They just need to appear on a fraction of the searches agents do to add dependencies and get lucky a couple times to start a new infection cluster.

Then to the more interesting question: why now?

1. Agents, agents everywhere.

2. MAJOR elections happening this year in the World, including US midterms and Brazilian mains. This appears to be an account-stealer worm - and my guess is it's looking to all those sweet sweet Facebook/Instagram/Tiktok/Whatsapp accounts ready to bot their way into oblivion.