Malicious javascript compromise on npmjs.com

These packages, about a billion downloads prior

supports-hyperlinks
chalk-template
simple-swizzle
slice-ansi
error-ex
is-arrayish
wrap-ansi
backslash
color-string
color-convert
color
color-name

Thread follows.

Example change and download stats on one of the 12 packages changed, incident started about 2 hours ago.

It's a cryptocurrency wallet drainer, RIP a load of devops dudes crypto.

If you want an idea of scale of trojan attempt - 'color' alone had 32m downloads in a week, the combined attempt was pushing a billion due to upstream dependencies.

Hunt tip: look for registry.npmjs.org in proxy logs, package names are in the URLs.

additional backdoored packages

ansi-styles
debug
chalk
supports-color
strip-ansi
ansi-regex
has-ansi

Weekly download stats for impacted packages prior to incident

ansi-styles (371.41m)
debug (357.6m)
backslash (0.26m)
chalk-template (3.9m)
supports-hyperlinks (19.2m)
has-ansi (12.1m)
simple-swizzle (26.26m)
color-string (27.48m)
error-ex (47.17m)
color-name (191.71m)
is-arrayish (73.8m)
slice-ansi (59.8m)
color-convert (193.5m)
wrap-ansi (197.99m)
ansi-regex (243.64m)
supports-color (287.1m)
strip-ansi (261.17m)
chalk (299.99m)

Total 2674m

Phishing email sent to maintainers, they basically targeted people with 2FA by getting them to.. reset their 2FA.

Developer confirms they fell for phishing email

It looks like others have too, found one other compromised repo from a different user, will have a dig tomorrow as bored of cyber tonight.

bsky.app/profile/bad-at-comput

For anybody confused about how this happens, basically:

- For about the past 15 years every business has been developing apps by pulling in 178 interconnected libraries written by 24 people in a shed in Skegness

- For about the past 2 years orgs have been buying AI vibe coding tools, where some exec screams "make online shop" into a computer and 389 libraries are added and an app is farted out

The output = if you want to own the world's companies, just phish one guy in Skegness

Follow

@GossiTheDog Fortunately, no one that is writing code for industrial control systems are using those poorly understood libraries..... RIGHT???

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