Attackers stole a long-lived npm access token belonging to the lead maintainer of axios, the most popular HTTP client library in JavaScript, and used it to publish two poisoned versions that install a cross-platform remote access trojan. The malicious releases target macOS, Windows, and Linux. They were live on the npm registry for roughly three hours before removal.Axios gets more than 100 million downloads per week. Wiz reports it sits in approximately 80% of cloud and code environments, touching everything from React front-ends to CI/CD pipelines to serverless functions. Huntress detected the first infections 89 seconds after the malicious package went live and confirmed at least 135 compromised systems among its customers during the exposure window.This is the third major npm supply chain compromise in seven months. Every one exploited maintainer credentials. This time, the target had adopted every defense the security community recommended.One credential, two branches, 39 minutesThe attacker took over the npm account of @jasonsaayman, a lead axios maintainer, changed the account email to an anonymous ProtonMail address, and published the poisoned packages through npm’s command-line interface. That bypassed the project’s GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline entirely.The attacker never touched the Axios source code. Instead, both release branches received a single new dependency: [email protected]. No part of the codebase imports it. The package exists solely to run a postinstall script that drops a cross-platform RAT onto the developer’s machine.The staging was precise. Eighteen hours before the axios releases, the attacker published a clean version of plain-crypto-js under a separate npm account to build publishing history and dodge new-package scanner alerts. Then came the weaponized 4.2.1. Both release branches hit within 39 minutes. Three platform-specific payloads were pre-built. The malware erases itself after execution and swaps in a clean package.json to frustrate forensic inspection.StepSe …
