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Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new bunch of malicious packages on the npm package registry that are designed to exfiltrate sensitive developer information. Software supply chain firm Phylum, which first identified the "test" packages on July 31, 2023, said they "demonstrated increasing functionality and refinement," hours after which they were removed and re-uploaded under different, legitimate-sounding package names. While the end goal of the undertaking is not clear, it's suspected to be a highly targeted campaign  aimed at the cryptocurrency sector  based on references to modules such as "rocketrefer" and "binarium." All the packages were published by the npm user malikrukd4732. A common feature across all the modules is the ability to launch JavaScript ("index.js") that's equipped to exfiltrate valuable information to a remote server. "The index.js code is spawned in a child process by the preinstall.j...

Several malicious packages have been uncovered across the npm, Python, and Ruby package repositories that drain funds from cryptocurrency wallets, erase entire codebases after installation, and exfiltrate Telegram API tokens, once again demonstrating the variety of supply chain threats lurking in open-source ecosystems. The findings come from multiple reports published by Checkmarx, ReversingLabs, Safety, and Socket in recent weeks. The list of identified packages across these platforms are listed below - Socket noted that the two malicious gems were published by a threat actor under the aliases Bùi nam, buidanhnam, and si_mobile merely days after Vietnam ordered a nationwide ban on the Telegram messaging app late last month for allegedly not cooperating with the government to tackle illicit activities related to fraud, drug trafficking, and terrorism. "These gems silently exfiltrate all data sent to the Telegram API by redirecting traffic through a command-and-control (C2...

Three additional rogue Python packages have been discovered in the Package Index (PyPI) repository as part of an ongoing malicious software supply chain campaign called  VMConnect , with signs pointing to the involvement of North Korean state-sponsored threat actors. The  findings  come from ReversingLabs, which detected the packages tablediter, request-plus, and requestspro. First disclosed at the start of the month by the company and Sonatype,  VMConnect  refers to a collection of Python packages that mimic popular open-source Python tools to download an unknown second-stage malware. The latest tranche is no different, with ReversingLabs noting that the bad actors are disguising their packages and making them appear trustworthy by using typosquatting techniques to impersonate prettytable and requests and confuse developers. The nefarious code within tablediter is designed to run in an endless execution loop in which a remote server is polled periodically ...

A set of fake npm packages discovered on the Node.js repository has been found to share ties with North Korean state-sponsored actors, new findings from Phylum show. The packages are named execution-time-async, data-time-utils, login-time-utils, mongodb-connection-utils, and mongodb-execution-utils. One of the packages in question,  execution-time-async , masquerades as its legitimate counterpart  execution-time , a library with more than 27,000 weekly downloads. Execution-time is a Node.js utility used to measure execution time in code. It "actually installs several malicious scripts including a cryptocurrency and credential stealer," Phylum  said , describing the campaign as a software supply chain attack targeting developers. The package was  downloaded 302 times  since February 4, 2024, before being taken down. In an interesting twist, the threat actors made efforts to conceal the obfuscated malicious code in a test file, which is designed to fetch nex...

Ever wonder what happens when attackers don't break the rules—they just follow them better than we do? When systems work exactly as they're built to, but that "by design" behavior quietly opens the door to risk? This week brings stories that make you stop and rethink what's truly under control. It's not always about a broken firewall or missed patch—it's about the small choices, default settings, and shortcuts that feel harmless until they're not. The real surprise? Sometimes the threat doesn't come from outside—it's baked right into how things are set up. Dive in to see what's quietly shaping today's security challenges. ⚡ Threat of the Week FBI Warns of Scattered Spider's on Airlines — The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned of a new set of attacks mounted by the notorious cybercrime group Scattered Spider targeting the airline sector using sophisticated social engineering techniques to obtain initial access. Cybersecurity vendors Palo Alto Networks Unit 4...

Fixing indirect vulnerabilities is one of those complex, tedious and, quite frankly, boring tasks that no one really wants to touch. No one except for  Debricked , it seems. Sure, there are lots of ways to do it manually, but can it be done automatically with minimal risk of breaking changes? The Debricked team decided to find out.  A forest full of fragile trees So, where do you even start? Firstly, there needs to be a way to fix the vulnerability, which, for indirect dependencies, is no walk in the park. Secondly, it needs to be done in a safe way, or, without anything breaking.  You see, indirect dependencies are introduced deep down the dependency tree and it's very tricky to get to the exact version you want. As Debricked's Head of R&D once put it, " You are turning the knobs by playing around with your direct dependencies and praying to Torvalds that the correct indirect packages are resolved. When Torvalds is in your favour, you have to sacrifice some clou...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package in the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that introduces malicious behavior through a dependency that allows it to establish persistence and achieve code execution. The package, named termncolor , realizes its nefarious functionality through a dependency package called colorinal by means of a multi-stage malware operation, Zscaler ThreatLabz said . While termncolor was downloaded 355 times, colorinal attracted 529 downloads. Both libraries are no longer available on PyPI. "This attack could leverage DLL side-loading to facilitate decryption, establish persistence, and conduct command-and-control (C2) communication, ending in remote code execution," according to researchers Manisha Ramcharan Prajapati and Satyam Singh. Once installed and executed, termncolor is designed to import colorinal, which, in turn, loads a rogue DLL that's responsible for decrypting and running the next-stage payload. Specifica...

A never-before-seen North Korean threat actor codenamed Moonstone Sleet has been attributed as behind cyber attacks targeting individuals and organizations in the software and information technology, education, and defense industrial base sectors with ransomware and bespoke malware previously associated with the infamous Lazarus Group. "Moonstone Sleet is observed to set up fake companies and job opportunities to engage with potential targets, employ trojanized versions of legitimate tools, create a malicious game, and deliver a new custom ransomware," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a new analysis. It also characterized the threat actor as using a combination of tried-and-true techniques used by other North Korean threat actors and unique attack methodologies to meet its strategic objectives. The adversary, hitherto tracked by Redmond under the emerging cluster moniker Storm-1789, is assessed to be a state-aligned group that originally exhibited strong t...

The developers of Rspack have revealed that two of their npm packages, @rspack/core and @rspack/cli , were compromised in a software supply chain attack that allowed a malicious actor to publish malicious versions to the official package registry with cryptocurrency mining malware. Following the discovery , versions 1.1.7 of both libraries have been unpublished from the npm registry. The latest safe version is 1.1.8. "They were released by an attacker who gained unauthorized npm publishing access, and contain malicious scripts," software supply chain security firm Socket said in an analysis. Rspack is billed as an alternative to the webpack , offering a "high performance JavaScript bundler written in Rust." Originally developed by ByteDance, it has since been adopted by several companies such as Alibaba, Amazon, Discord, and Microsoft, among others. The npm packages in question, @rspack/core, and @rspack/cli, attract weekly downloads of over 300,000 and 145...

Today, every unpatched system, leaked password, and overlooked plugin is a doorway for attackers. Supply chains stretch deep into the code we trust, and malware hides not just in shady apps — but in job offers, hardware, and cloud services we rely on every day. Hackers don't need sophisticated exploits anymore. Sometimes, your credentials and a little social engineering are enough. This week, we trace how simple oversights turn into major breaches — and the silent threats most companies still underestimate. Let's dive in. ⚡ Threat of the Week UNC5221 Exploits New Ivanti Flaw to Drop Malware — The China-nexus cyber espionage group tracked as UNC5221 exploited a now-patched flaw in Ivanti Connect Secure, CVE-2025-22457 (CVSS score: 9.0), to deliver an in-memory dropper called TRAILBLAZE, a passive backdoor codenamed BRUSHFIRE, and the SPAWN malware suite. The vulnerability was originally patched by Ivanti on February 11, 2025, indicating that the threat actors studied the patch a...

The North Korean threat actors behind the ongoing Contagious Interview campaign are spreading their tentacles on the npm ecosystem by publishing more malicious packages that deliver the BeaverTail malware, as well as a new remote access trojan (RAT) loader. "These latest samples employ hexadecimal string encoding to evade automated detection systems and manual code audits, signaling a variation in the threat actors' obfuscation techniques," Socket security researcher Kirill Boychenko said in a report. The packages in question, which were collectively downloaded more than 5,600 times prior to their removal, are listed below - empty-array-validator twitterapis dev-debugger-vite snore-log core-pino events-utils icloud-cod cln-logger node-clog consolidate-log consolidate-logger The disclosure comes nearly a month after a set of six npm packages were discovered distributing BeaverTail , a JavaScript stealer that's also capable of delivering a Python-b...

The North Korea-linked threat actor known as UNC4899 has been attributed to attacks targeting two different organizations by approaching their employees via LinkedIn and Telegram. "Under the guise of freelance opportunities for software development work, UNC4899 leveraged social engineering techniques to successfully convince the targeted employees to execute malicious Docker containers in their respective workstations," Google's cloud division said [PDF] in its Cloud Threat Horizons Report for H2 2025. UNC4899 overlaps with activity tracked under the monikers Jade Sleet, PUKCHONG, Slow Pisces, and TraderTraitor. Active since at least 2020, the state-sponsored actor is known for its targeting of cryptocurrency and blockchain industries. Notably, the hacking group has been implicated in significant cryptocurrency heists , including that of Axie Infinity in March 2022 ($625 million), DMM Bitcoin in May 2024 ($308 million), and Bybit in February 2025 ($1.4 billion). ...

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to an incident in which the popular GitHub Action tj-actions/changed-files was compromised to leak secrets from repositories using the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflow. The incident involved the tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action, which is used in over 23,000 repositories. It's used to track and retrieve all changed files and directories. The supply chain compromise has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2025-30066 (CVSS score: 8.6). The incident is said to have taken place sometime before March 14, 2025. "In this attack, the attackers modified the action's code and retroactively updated multiple version tags to reference the malicious commit," StepSecurity said . "The compromised Action prints CI/CD secrets in GitHub Actions build logs." The net result of this behavior is that should the workflow logs be publicly accessible, they could lead to the unauthorized expo...

GitGuardian is famous for its annual  State of Secrets Sprawl  report. In their 2023 report, they found over 10 million exposed passwords, API keys, and other credentials exposed in public GitHub commits. The takeaways in their 2024 report did not just highlight 12.8 million  new  exposed secrets in GitHub, but a number in the popular Python package repository  PyPI . PyPI, short for the Python Package Index, hosts over 20 terabytes of files that are freely available for use in Python projects. If you've ever typed pip install [name of package], it likely pulled that package from PyPI. A lot of people use it too. Whether it's GitHub, PyPI, or others, the report states, "open-source packages make up an estimated 90% of the code run in production today. "  It's easy to see why that is when these packages help developers avoid the reinvention of millions of wheels every day. In the 2024 report, GitGuardian reported finding over 11,000 exposed  unique...