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Cybersecurity researchers have flagged three malicious npm packages that are designed to target the Apple macOS version of Cursor, a popular artificial intelligence (AI)-powered source code editor. "Disguised as developer tools offering 'the cheapest Cursor API,' these packages steal user credentials, fetch an encrypted payload from threat actor-controlled infrastructure, overwrite Cursor's main.js file, and disable auto-updates to maintain persistence," Socket researcher Kirill Boychenko said . The packages in question are listed below - sw-cur (2,771 downloads) sw-cur1 (307 downloads), and aiide-cur (163 downloads) All three packages continue to be available for download from the npm registry. "Aiide-cur" was first published on February 14, 2025. It was uploaded by a user named "aiide." The npm library is described as a "command-line tool for configuring the macOS version of the Cursor editor." The other two packages, ...

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...

The second wave of the Shai-Hulud supply chain attack has spilled over to the Maven ecosystem after compromising more than 830 packages in the npm registry. The Socket Research Team said it identified a Maven Central package named org.mvnpm:posthog-node:4.18.1 that embeds the same two components associated with Sha1-Hulud: the "setup_bun.js" loader and the main payload "bun_environment.js." The company told The Hacker News that org.mvnpm:posthog-node:4.18.1 was the only Java package identified so far. "This means the PostHog project has compromised releases in both the JavaScript/npm and Java/Maven ecosystems, driven by the same Shai Hulud v2 payload," the cybersecurity company said in a Tuesday update. It's worth noting that the Maven Central package is not published by PostHog itself. Rather, the "org.mvnpm" coordinates are generated via an automated mvnpm process that rebuilds npm packages as Maven artifacts. The Maven Central said...

Cybersecurity researchers are alerting to a software supply chain attack targeting the popular @solana/web3.js npm library that involved pushing two malicious versions capable of harvesting users' private keys with an aim to drain their cryptocurrency wallets. The attack has been detected in versions 1.95.6 and 1.95.7. Both these versions are no longer available for download from the npm registry. The package is widely used, attracting over 400,000 weekly downloads. "These compromised versions contain injected malicious code that is designed to steal private keys from unsuspecting developers and users, potentially enabling attackers to drain cryptocurrency wallets," Socket said in a report. @solana/web3.js is an npm package that can be used to interact with the Solana JavaScript software development kit (SDK) for building Node.js and web apps. According to Datadog security researcher Christophe Tafani-Dereeper , "the backdoor inserted in v1.95.7 adds an ...

An unknown threat actor has been observed publishing typosquat packages to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository for nearly six months with an aim to deliver malware capable of gaining persistence, stealing sensitive data, and accessing cryptocurrency wallets for financial gain. The 27 packages, which masqueraded as popular legitimate Python libraries, attracted thousands of downloads, Checkmarx said in a new report. A majority of the downloads originated from the U.S., China, France, Hong Kong, Germany, Russia, Ireland, Singapore, the U.K., and Japan. "A defining characteristic of this attack was the utilization of steganography to hide a malicious payload within an innocent-looking image file, which increased the stealthiness of the attack," the software supply chain security firm  said . Some of the packages are pyefflorer, pyminor, pyowler, pystallerer, pystob, and pywool, the last of which was planted on May 13, 2023. A common denominator to these packages is t...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered as many as 11 malicious Python packages that have been cumulatively downloaded more than 41,000 times from the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository, and could be exploited to steal Discord access tokens, passwords, and even stage dependency confusion attacks. The Python packages have since been removed from the repository following responsible disclosure by DevOps firm JFrog — importantpackage / important-package pptest ipboards owlmoon DiscordSafety trrfab 10Cent10 / 10Cent11 yandex-yt yiffparty Two of the packages ("importantpackage," "10Cent10," and their variants) were found obtaining a reverse shell on a compromised machine, giving the attacker full control over the system. Two other packages "ipboards" and "trrfab" masqueraded as legitimate dependencies designed to be automatically imported by taking advantage of a technique called  dependency confusion  or namespace confusion. Unli...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered three malicious packages in the npm registry that masquerade as a popular Telegram bot library but harbor SSH backdoors and data exfiltration capabilities. The packages in question are listed below - node-telegram-utils (132 downloads) node-telegram-bots-api (82 downloads) node-telegram-util (73 downloads) According to supply chain security firm Socket, the packages are designed to mimic node-telegram-bot-api , a popular Node.js Telegram Bot API with over 100,000 weekly downloads. The three libraries are still available for download. "While that number may sound modest, it only takes a single compromised environment to pave the way for wide-scale infiltration or unauthorized data access," security researcher Kush Pandya said . "Supply chain security incidents repeatedly show that even a handful of installs can have catastrophic repercussions, especially when attackers gain direct access to developer systems or produc...

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). ...

Roblox developers are the target of a persistent campaign that seeks to compromise systems through bogus npm packages, once again underscoring how threat actors continue to exploit the trust in the open-source ecosystem to deliver malware. "By mimicking the popular 'noblox.js' library, attackers have published dozens of packages designed to steal sensitive data and compromise systems," Checkmarx researcher Yehuda Gelb said in a technical report. Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system with nearly 80 million daily active users , and thus makes for an attractive target for threat actors. It was launched in September 2006 for Windows, before debuting in other platforms, including iOS, Android, Xbox One, Meta Quest, and PlayStation 4. Details about the activity were first documented by ReversingLabs in August 2023 as part of a campaign that delivered a stealer called Luna Token Grabber, which it said was a "replay of an attack uncovered two ...

At least 17 malware-laced packages have been discovered on the NPM package Registry, adding to a  recent barrage of malicious software  hosted and delivered through open-source software repositories such as PyPi and RubyGems. DevOps firm JFrog said the libraries, now taken down, were designed to grab Discord access tokens and  environment variables  from users' computers as well as gain full control over a victim's system. "The packages' payloads are varied, ranging from infostealers up to full remote access backdoors," researchers Andrey Polkovnychenko and Shachar Menashe said in a  report  published Wednesday. "Additionally, the packages have different infection tactics, including typosquatting,  dependency confusion  and trojan functionality." The list of packages is below - prerequests-xcode (version 1.0.4) discord-selfbot-v14 (version 12.0.3) discord-lofy (version 11.5.1) discordsystem (version 11.5.1) discord-vilao (version 1.0.0)...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered two malicious packages on the npm registry that are designed to infect another locally installed package, underscoring the continued evolution of software supply chain attacks targeting the open-source ecosystem. The packages in question are ethers-provider2 and ethers-providerz , with the former downloaded 73 times to date since it was published on March 15, 2025. The second package, likely removed by the malware author themselves, did not attract any downloads. "They were simple downloaders whose malicious payload was cleverly hidden," ReversingLabs researcher Lucija Valentić said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The interesting part lay in their second stage, which would 'patch' the legitimate npm package ethers , installed locally, with a new file containing the malicious payload. That patched file would ultimately serve a reverse shell." The development marks a new escalation of threat actors...

What do a source code editor, a smart billboard, and a web server have in common? They've all become launchpads for attacks—because cybercriminals are rethinking what counts as "infrastructure." Instead of chasing high-value targets directly, threat actors are now quietly taking over the overlooked: outdated software, unpatched IoT devices, and open-source packages. It's not just clever—it's reshaping how intrusion, persistence, and evasion happen at scale. ⚡ Threat of the Week 5Socks Proxy Using IoT, EoL Systems Dismantled in Law Enforcement Operation — A joint law enforcement operation undertaken by Dutch and U.S. authorities dismantled a criminal proxy network, known as anyproxy[.]net and 5socks[.]net, that was powered by thousands of infected Internet of Things (IoT) and end-of-life (EoL) devices, enlisting them into a botnet for providing anonymity to malicious actors. The illicit platform, active since 2004, advertised more than 7,000 online proxies daily, with infected ...

Unknown threat actors have been found propagating trojanized versions of jQuery on npm, GitHub, and jsDelivr in what appears to be an instance of a "complex and persistent" supply chain attack. "This attack stands out due to the high variability across packages," Phylum said in an analysis published last week. "The attacker has cleverly hidden the malware in the seldom-used ' end ' function of jQuery, which is internally called by the more popular ' fadeTo ' function from its animation utilities." As many as 68 packages have been linked to the campaign. They were published to the npm registry starting from May 26 to June 23, 2024, using names such as cdnjquery, footersicons, jquertyi, jqueryxxx, logoo, and sytlesheets, among others.  There is evidence to suggest that each of the bogus packages were manually assembled and published due to the sheer number of packages published from various accounts, the differences in naming conventi...

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of a malicious campaign targeting users of the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository with bogus libraries masquerading as "time" related utilities, but harboring hidden functionality to steal sensitive data such as cloud access tokens. Software supply chain security firm ReversingLabs said it discovered two sets of packages totaling 20 of them. The packages have been cumulatively downloaded over 14,100 times - snapshot-photo (2,448 downloads) time-check-server (316 downloads) time-check-server-get (178 downloads) time-server-analysis (144 downloads) time-server-analyzer (74 downloads) time-server-test (155 downloads) time-service-checker (151 downloads) aclient-sdk (120 downloads) acloud-client (5,496 downloads) acloud-clients (198 downloads) acloud-client-uses (294 downloads) alicloud-client (622 downloads) alicloud-client-sdk (206 downloads) amzclients-sdk (100 downloads) awscloud-clients-core (206 downloads) creden...

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 ...