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Researchers linked a threat actor tracked as RED-LILI to a large-scale software supply chain attack that pushed nearly 800 malicious packages to the npm registry in a burst of activity over roughly a week. Checkmarx reported the operation began around February 23, 2022, and relied on a highly automated pipeline that created a separate npm account for each package, complicating bulk detection and takedown efforts. The campaign used custom Python tooling, Selenium, and the open-source Interactsh project to automate account creation and bypass npm email one-time-password verification during signup.
The malicious packages were part of a broader effort to compromise developers and downstream environments through common package ecosystem abuse techniques, including typosquatting and dependency confusion. Reporting tied the activity to packages crafted to target organizations such as Azure, Uber, and Airbnb, underscoring how attackers can industrialize package publication at scale and turn open-source repositories into an efficient delivery channel for supply chain compromise.
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Checkmarx said the earliest evidence of anomalous activity tied to the RED-LILI-linked NPM supply chain campaign was observed on February 23, 2022. The operation involved automated creation of separate NPM accounts for malicious package publication.
Checkmarx publicly analyzed the large-scale campaign and described the attacker’s automated workflow using custom Python, Selenium, and Interactsh to bypass NPM signup OTP verification and publish malicious packages. The report linked the activity to dependency confusion and typosquatting targeting developers associated with Azure, Uber, and Airbnb.
After the initial activity was observed, the attacker published nearly 800 malicious NPM packages in bursts over roughly a week. The packages were distributed across one account per package to hinder bulk detection and takedown.
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A large-scale attack on the NPM (Node Package Manager) ecosystem has been uncovered, involving the publication of over 64,000 malicious packages by a coordinated group known as the IndonesianFoods worm. This campaign, active for more than two years, leveraged at least seven newly created NPM user accounts to distribute the malicious packages, which are notable for their consistent naming patterns and unusual internal dictionary. The attackers focused on creating new packages rather than stealing credentials, and the scale of the operation more than doubles the previously known number of malicious NPM packages. Security researchers have made available a comprehensive list of the affected packages and user accounts for further analysis. In a separate but related incident, researchers identified a highly popular fake NPM package, "@acitons/artifact," which was downloaded over 206,000 times. This package used a typosquatting technique to mimic the legitimate GitHub Actions Toolkit and was designed to steal GitHub credentials by executing a malicious post-install script. The attack highlights the growing threat of software supply chain compromises, with the malicious package aiming to exfiltrate tokens from build environments and potentially publish further malicious artifacts. Both incidents underscore the increasing sophistication and scale of supply chain attacks targeting the JavaScript development community.
Jun 29, 2026
Open-source software supply chain risk continued to escalate, with reporting citing **454,600+** newly identified malicious packages across major repositories (including **PyPI, npm, Maven Central, NuGet, and Hugging Face**) and tactics ranging from **credential theft** to **multi-stage attacks** and even early **self-replicating** package malware. The activity reportedly concentrated heavily in **npm**, including high-volume “ecosystem flooding” (e.g., single accounts publishing **150,000+** malicious packages in days) and **hijacking of trusted projects**, exploiting developer reliance on superficial trust signals such as package names, READMEs, and download counts. Separately, researchers disclosed **“PackageGate”** vulnerabilities in JavaScript package managers (**npm, pnpm, vlt, and Bun**) that can bypass common post-incident defenses—namely `--ignore-scripts` and lockfile integrity—enabling malicious code execution via compromised dependencies. Koi Security reported six issues; **pnpm, vlt, and Bun** shipped fixes, while **npm** reportedly treated the behavior as expected. In parallel, threat actors abused **GitHub’s fork architecture** to distribute a spoofed *GitHub Desktop* installer promoted via search ads; execution deployed **HijackLoader** and established persistence via a **scheduled task**, underscoring that supply chain threats extend beyond package registries into developer tooling distribution channels.
Jun 29, 2026
Threat actors are using **malicious npm packages** to steal developer credentials and CI/CD secrets, enabling rapid escalation into cloud environments. Google reported that **UNC6426** leveraged keys stolen during the earlier compromise of the *nx* npm ecosystem to pivot from a stolen developer GitHub token into **AWS administrative access within 72 hours**, abusing **GitHub-to-AWS OpenID Connect (OIDC) trust** to create a new admin role. The actor then used that access to **exfiltrate data from AWS S3** and conduct **destructive actions** in production cloud environments; the initial *nx* compromise involved a GitHub Actions `pull_request_target` workflow abuse (“**Pwn Request**”) that enabled publishing trojanized packages containing a `postinstall` chain that executed the **QUIETVAULT** JavaScript credential stealer and uploaded stolen data to a public GitHub repo (`/s1ngularity-repository-1`). Separately, researchers reported new waves of the **PhantomRaven** npm supply-chain campaign distributing **88 additional malicious packages** (via ~50 disposable accounts) that target JavaScript developers by exfiltrating secrets from files like `.gitconfig` and `.npmrc`, environment variables, and CI/CD tokens (e.g., GitHub/GitLab/Jenkins/CircleCI). The campaign uses **slopsquatting** (LLM-suggested lookalike package names) and a stealth technique called **Remote Dynamic Dependencies (RDD)**, where `package.json` pulls a dependency from an external URL so the malicious payload is fetched at install time (`npm install`) and can evade static package inspection; researchers indicated many of these packages remained available in the npm registry at the time of reporting.
Jun 29, 2026