This morning, we were alerted to a large-scale attack against npm. This appears to the be work of the same threat actors behind the Nx attack on August 27th 2025. This was originally published by Socket and StepSecurity who noted 40 packages had been comrpomised, since then an additional 147 packages have been infected with malware including packages from CrowdStrike.
The scale, scope and impact of this attack is significant. The attackers are using the same playbook in large parts as the original attack, but have stepped up their game. They have turned it into a full worm, which does these things automatically:
- Steal secrets and publish them to GitHub publicly
- Run trufflehog and query Cloud metadata endpoints to gather secrets
- Attempt to create a new GitHub action with a data exiltration mechanism through webhook[.]site
- Iterate the repositories on GitHub a user has access to, and make them public
Since our initial alert this morning we’ve confirmed the following additional behaviours and important details. For those that don’t know, Shai Hulud is the name for the worm in the Dune franchise. A clear indication of the intent of the attackers.
“No way to prevent this”, says only package manager to which this regularly happens
This is probably the biggest hack of the year. As of the writing it had infected 140+ packages including some from big names like CrowdStrike. npm is in a LOT of things, and this thing is a true worm.
Keep your secrets:
alias npm="docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd):/app -w /app node:latest npm"Not enough, but better than nothing.
I thought I was crazy for doing this, but it’s good to know I’m not the only one.
This won’t protect your .env files though, right?
ETA: I’m surprised BSD jails haven’t gained more ground — at this point I’m running a ton of containers.
This won’t protect your .env files though, right?
Right, but my machine is safe at least.
I use bsd containers for everything but home assistant on my home server and love them! The downside for most people at the moment is having to set them up manually. I can export the thin jail and move the archive across computers as backups and the fine tuned control is beautiful. FreeBSD offers a way to check for security vulnerabilities in installed packages (pkg audit -F) that I run as a cron job and email myself daily to check for needed updates.
Problem is most people want a single docker install and it’s all set up, not something that needs manual configuration. Bastille has templates that can do this for bsd jails but there’s not a lot of services with templates.
Edit: also frustrating is a lot of new apps for home servers only offer a docker install so installing from source becomes a huge pita and makes bsd jails harder to use (looking at you gramps-web specifically).
Good idea. I wonder if
nxandpnpmcould be ran like that as wellIt’s possible. For pnpm package cache you need to attach another volume, and another for globally installed packages.
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Why do you tell us that?
Dear Sir or Mrs lennivelkant @ discuss.tchncs.de,
most people, even people in technology, have absolutely no clue what this thing is all about … and reading the title here gives them no clue either.
Even going through the article, most people in technology would still don’t know how this may affect them - - so context should be at least located - - this is what I was trying to do.
People in computer science see their field of expertise so deeply that they come to believe that the basis of their field is ubiquitous. Well, it is not. Not at all.
You people in that field are suffering from that delusion.
Now, the comment I wrote was a question. Only if you click on that question you have this hidden a.i. answer that was included and hidden in the comment. That answer was not the comment itself.
I certainly hope you don’t have more of these questions and that people in “c.s.” (computer science for the rest of us) could realize how far from the mundane they are.
all the best, - - A_A @ …
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What is the point of posting an LLM response to “what is web development”? Seriously? I don’t get it. If you don’t know and wanted to ask it, fine. But why copypaste it to c/technology?
see my answer to the other user
. that is :
Dear Sir or Mrs lennivelkant @ discuss.tchncs.de,
most people, even people in technology, have absolutely no clue what this thing is all about … and reading the title here gives them no clue either.
Even going through the article, most people in technology would still don’t know how this may affect them - - so context should be at least located - - this is what I was trying to do.
People in computer science see their field of expertise so deeply that they come to believe that the basis of their field is ubiquitous. Well, it is not. Not at all.
You people in that field are suffering from that delusion.
Now, the comment I wrote was a question. Only if you click on that question you have this hidden a.i. answer that was included and hidden in the comment. That answer was not the comment itself.
I certainly hope you don’t have more of these questions and that people in “c.s.” (computer science for the rest of us) could realize how far from the mundane they are.
all the best, - - A_A @ …
I do have a ton more questions, but I’m not sure if I want to ask them.
