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The malicious code inserted into the open-source library XZ Utils, a widely used package present in major Linux distributions, is also capable of facilitating remote code execution, a new analysis has revealed. The audacious supply chain compromise, tracked as  CVE-2024-3094  (CVSS score: 10.0), came to light last week when Microsoft engineer and PostgreSQL developer Andres Freund alerted to the  presence  of a  backdoor  in the data compression utility that gives remote attackers a way to sidestep secure shell authentication and gain complete access to an affected system. "I was doing some micro-benchmarking at the time, needed to quiesce the system to reduce noise," Freund said in a post shared on Mastodon. "Saw sshd processes were using a surprising amount of CPU, despite immediately failing because of wrong usernames etc." "Profiled sshd, showing lots of cpu time in liblzma, with perf unable to attribute it to a symbol. Got suspicious. Recalled tha...

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a large-scale spam campaign that has flooded the npm registry with thousands of fake packages since early 2024 as part of a likely financially motivated effort. "The packages were systematically published over an extended period, flooding the npm registry with junk packages that survived in the ecosystem for almost two years," Endor Labs researchers Cris Staicu and Kiran Raj said in a Tuesday report. The coordinated campaign has so far published as many as 67,579 packages , according to SourceCodeRED security researcher Paul McCarty, who first flagged the activity. The end goal is quite unusual – It's designed to inundate the npm registry with random packages rather than focusing on data theft or other malicious behaviors. The worm-life propagation mechanism and the use of a distinctive naming scheme that relies on Indonesian names and food terms for the newly created packages have lent it the moniker IndonesianFood...

Cybersecurity researchers from  SafeDep and Veracode detailed a number of malware-laced npm packages that are designed to execute remote code and download additional payloads. The packages in question are listed below - eslint-config-airbnb-compat (676 Downloads) ts-runtime-compat-check (1,588 Downloads) solders (983 Downloads) @mediawave/lib (386 Downloads) All the identified npm packages have since been taken down from npm, but not before they were downloaded hundreds of times from the package registry.  SafeDep's analysis of eslint-config-airbnb-compat found that the JavaScript library has ts-runtime-compat-check listed as a dependency, which, in turn, contacts an external server defined in the former package ("proxy.eslint-proxy[.]site") to retrieve and execute a Base64-encoded string. The exact nature of the payload is unknown. "It implements a multi-stage remote code execution attack using a transitive dependency to hide the malicious code,"...

Today there are plenty of cybersecurity tools on the market. It is now more important than ever that the tools you decide to use work well together. If they don't, you will not get the complete picture, and you won't be able to analyze the entire system from a holistic perspective.  This means that you won't be able to do the right mitigations to improve your security posture. Here are examples of two tools that work very well together and how they will help you to get a holistic view of your cybersecurity posture.  Debricked - Use Open Source Securely How is Open Source a Security Risk?  Open source is not a security risk per se; it's more secure than proprietary software in many ways! With the code being publicly available, it's a lot easier for the surrounding community to identify vulnerabilities, and fixes can be done quickly. What you do need to keep in mind, though, is that any vulnerabilities in open source are publicly disclosed and the public to anyo...

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...

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 ...

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...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of what appears to be a new strain of Shai Hulud on the npm registry with slight modifications from the previous wave observed last month. The npm package that embeds the novel Shai Hulud strain is " @vietmoney/react-big-calendar ," which was uploaded to npm back in March 2021 by a user named "hoquocdat." It was updated for the first time on December 28, 2025, to version 0.26.2. The package has been downloaded 698 times since its initial publication. The latest version has been downloaded 197 times. Aikido, which spotted the package, said it has not spotted any major spread or infections following the release of the package. "This suggests we may have caught the attackers testing their payload," security researcher Charlie Eriksen said . "The differences in the code suggests that this was obfuscated again from the original source, not modified in place. This makes it highly unlikely to be a copy-ca...

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...

As software supply chain security becomes more and more crucial, security, DevSecOps, and DevOps teams are more challenged than ever to build transparent trust in the software they deliver or use. In fact, in Gartner recently published their 2022 cybersecurity predictions - not only do they anticipate the continued expansion of attack surfaces in the near future, they also list digital supply chain as a major rising attack surface and one of the top trends to follow in 2022. After all, any software is only as secure as the weakest link in its supply chain. One bad component, any malicious access to your development environment—or any vulnerability in your software's delivery life cycle—and you risk your code's integrity, your customers, and your reputation.  Scribe Security  recently launched a new platform that claims to address these urgent needs by enabling its users to build trust in their software across teams and organizations. According to Scribe Security, SBOM is a ...

Malware isn't just trying to hide anymore—it's trying to belong. We're seeing code that talks like us, logs like us, even documents itself like a helpful teammate. Some threats now look more like developer tools than exploits. Others borrow trust from open-source platforms, or quietly build themselves out of AI-written snippets. It's not just about being malicious—it's about being believable. In this week's cybersecurity recap, we explore how today's threats are becoming more social, more automated, and far too sophisticated for yesterday's instincts to catch. ⚡ Threat of the Week Secret Blizzard Conduct ISP-Level AitM Attacks to Deploy ApolloShadow — Russian cyberspies are abusing local internet service providers' networks to target foreign embassies in Moscow and likely collect intelligence from diplomats' devices. The activity has been attributed to the Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) known as Secret Blizzard (aka Turla). It likely involves using an adversary-...