npm Registry | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered several cryptocurrency packages on the npm registry that have been hijacked to siphon sensitive information such as environment variables from compromised systems. "Some of these packages have lived on npmjs.com for over 9 years, and provide legitimate functionality to blockchain developers," Sonatype researcher Ax Sharma said . "However, [...] the latest versions of each of these packages were laden with obfuscated scripts." The affected packages and their hijacked versions are listed below - country-currency-map (2.1.8) bnb-javascript-sdk-nobroadcast (2.16.16) @bithighlander/bitcoin-cash-js-lib (5.2.2) eslint-config-travix (6.3.1) @crosswise-finance1/sdk-v2 (0.1.21) @keepkey/device-protocol (7.13.3) @veniceswap/uikit (0.65.34) @veniceswap/eslint-config-pancake (1.6.2) babel-preset-travix (1.2.1) @travix/ui-themes (1.1.5) @coinmasters/types (4.8.16) Analysis of these packages by the software supply chain ...

Threat actors with ties to North Korea have been observed publishing a set of malicious packages to the npm registry, indicating "coordinated and relentless" efforts to target developers with malware and steal cryptocurrency assets. The latest wave, which was observed between August 12 and 27, 2024, involved packages named temp-etherscan-api, ethersscan-api, telegram-con, helmet-validate, and qq-console. "Behaviors in this campaign lead us to believe that qq-console is attributable to the North Korean campaign known as 'Contagious Interview,'" software supply chain security firm Phylum said . Contagious Interview refers to an ongoing campaign that seeks to compromise software developers with information stealing malware as part of a purported job interview process that involves tricking them into downloading bogus npm packages or fake installers for video conferencing software such as MiroTalk hosted on decoy websites. The end goal of the attacks is to...

When people think of cybersecurity threats, they often picture external hackers breaking into networks. However, some of the most damaging breaches stem from within organizations. Whether through negligence or malicious intent, insiders can expose your organization to significant cybersecurity risks. According to Verizon's 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report , 57% of companies experience over 20 insider-related security incidents a year, with human error involved in 68% of data breaches. With that, insider attacks result in the highest costs, averaging USD 4.99 million per attack, as per the 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report by IBM Security.  What are insider threats? An insider threat originates from within an organization – it's the potential for anyone with authorized access to your critical systems to misuse their access, harming your organization. The worst part is that insiders are already within your IT perimeter and are familiar with your internal security prot...

The North Korea-linked threat actor known as Moonstone Sleet has continued to push malicious npm packages to the JavaScript package registry with the aim of infecting Windows systems, underscoring the persistent nature of their campaigns. The packages in question, harthat-api and harthat-hash , were published on July 7, 2024, according to Datadog Security Labs. Both the libraries did not attract any downloads and were shortly pulled after a brief period of time. The security arm of the cloud monitoring firm is tracking the threat actor under the name Stressed Pungsan, which exhibits overlaps with a newly discovered North Korean malicious activity cluster dubbed Moonstone Sleet. "While the name resembles the Hardhat npm package (an Ethereum development utility), its content does not indicate any intention to typosquat it," Datadog researchers Sebastian Obregoso and Zack Allen said . "The malicious package reuses code from a well-known GitHub repository called node-...

Cybersecurity researchers have identified two malicious packages on the npm package registry that concealed backdoor code to execute malicious commands sent from a remote server. The packages in question – img-aws-s3-object-multipart-copy and legacyaws-s3-object-multipart-copy – have been downloaded 190 and 48 times each. As of writing, they have been taken down by the npm security team. "They contained sophisticated command and control functionality hidden in image files that would be executed during package installation," software supply chain security firm Phylum said in an analysis. The packages are designed to impersonate a legitimate npm library called aws-s3-object-multipart-copy , but come with an altered version of the "index.js" file to execute a JavaScript file ("loadformat.js"). For its part, the JavaScript file is designed to process three images -- that feature the corporate logos for Intel, Microsoft, and AMD -- with the image corres...