Over 320 NPM Packages Hit by Fresh Mini Shai-Hulud Supply Chain Attack

"The NPM maintainer account 'atool', which has access to multiple packages across the @antv namespace, and which publishes timeago.js (1.5 million weekly downloads), was compromised and used to publish malicious package versions. The attack propagated downstream to other highly popular packages, including echarts-for-react (~1.1 million weekly downloads), "impacting a much broader set of applications and continuous integration (CI) environments," Microsoft warned on Tuesday."

"According to Socket, roughly 639 malicious versions of the compromised packages were published across "data visualization, graphing, mapping, charting, and React component ecosystems". "Across the full Mini Shai-Hulud campaign we have tracked 1,055 versions across 502 unique packages. The campaign spans NPM, PyPI, and Composer, with NPM representing the overwhelming majority of the activity: 1,048 NPM versions across 498 unique NPM packages, plus 6 PyPI entries across 3 packages and 1 Composer package-version entry," Socket notes."

"Most of the affected packages are in the @antv namespace and contain an install-time payload that triggers a multi-stage infection chain in which payloads are fetched from GitHub-hosted infrastructure. Secondary payloads designed to steal credentials and achieve persistence are also downloaded, Wiz says."

""Every compromised package carries an obfuscated payload that reads GitHub Actions runner process memory to extract masked CI/CD secrets in plaintext, harvests credentials from over 130 file paths covering AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, HashiCorp Vault, cryptocurrency wallets, and developer tools, then exfiltrates stolen data through two channels," StepSecurity explains."

A supply chain attack targeted over 320 NPM packages and also affected GitHub Actions and a VS Code extension. The NPM maintainer account atool, with access to multiple @antv namespace packages, was compromised and used to publish malicious versions of timeago.js and other packages. The malicious updates propagated to popular downstream dependencies such as echarts-for-react, expanding impact across applications and continuous integration environments. Socket reported 639 malicious versions across data visualization, graphing, mapping, charting, and React component ecosystems. Wiz reported install-time payloads that fetched additional stages from GitHub-hosted infrastructure, including credential theft and persistence components. StepSecurity reported obfuscated payloads that extracted CI/CD secrets from GitHub Actions runner memory, harvested credentials from many cloud and developer-related file paths, and exfiltrated stolen data through two channels.

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