buildOne report1 publisher Defender flags the exe in a rea-tools copy of the REA repo
According to a GitHub issue on REA, a fake rea-tools repo offered a Windows exe that 8 of 45 VirusTotal engines flag, with 172 downloads. The copy shipped a binary and no npm package was reported, so the npx risk is a next-attack scenario; two checks on repo name and creation dates would have caught this one.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives30
- Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher Databricks' LLM triage stops short of a malicious verdict on 14.4% of npm malware that bundles a binary
Databricks says its LLM pipeline fails to reach a decisive malicious verdict on 14.4% of npm malware that bundles a binary, against 6.2% for source-only packages. Those binary packages are 432 of 11,413 scanned versions, and Databricks tests feeding the model pre-computed static evidence as the fix.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives60
- Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher Of 12,915 MCP servers HISTOR started in a sandbox, 41% never answered
HISTOR started 12,915 npm and PyPI MCP servers in a sandbox, and 5,259 (41%) never answered, according to its own post. About 24% were broken or not stdio servers at all. Another 16% depended on keys, flags or runtimes a client config can supply.
Reality
- Evidence66
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap−10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence64
buildOne report1 publisher A fake recruiter's take-home ships an npm token that unlocks a package the public registry 404s
A developer says a fake-recruiter take-home bundled an npm token to fetch a hidden package, in a scheme a government advisory counts at 30,000+ machines. The author ran nothing and never read the hidden package, so its payload is inferred from structure.
Reality
- Evidence42
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence55
Bloom Security counted more than 1,500 npm packages exposed because Trusted Publishing bound publish rights to a GitHub repository name. GitHub says it has shipped fixes, and Bloom's Golan Myers said it is unknown whether anyone exploited the flaw.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 45%
- Operator
- Operator 38%
- Investor
- Investor 17%
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives55
- Confidence64
buildOne report1 publisher OpenCode's v2 upgrade exits 0, then drops v1 plugins at WARN level on first start
In one developer's test, OpenCode 1.19.0's upgrade to v2 left two v1 plugin copies unloaded while the session kept running. The post's loud, silent, absent summary of the three breaking changes does not match its own logs.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap
- Not scored
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence55
Bloom Security finds 1,500 npm packages vulnerable to a publishing attack that needs no stolen credentials
Bloom Security found more than 1,500 npm packages, with over 10 million downloads, vulnerable to a publishing attack that needs no stolen credentials. Bloom also put AI-agent installs at about 70 packages a month on a typical endpoint, but its demonstration used only repositories its researchers controlled.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption20
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives65
- Confidence45
buildOne report1 publisher A one-day install cooldown is 1440 in pnpm, 1 in npm and 86400 in Bun
pnpm, npm, Bun and Yarn can each refuse versions younger than a set age, using minutes, days, seconds and minutes respectively. Pasting pnpm's 1440 into npm makes the cooldown 1440 days, roughly 3.9 years.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption40
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence60
buildOne report1 publisher ngx-daterangepicker-material resumes releases after a gap of more than three years
ngx-daterangepicker-material, downloaded about 250,000 times a month, now has a release for each Angular major from 16 to 22. About 7 in 10 installs are still on v6, and a ^6.0.4 range will not move them, so each team has to pick its major by hand.
Reality
- Evidence35
- Adoption60
- Hype gap+5
- Incentives25
- Confidence50
buildConfirmed2 publishers Tensorlake's npm SDK 0.5.144 carried a Shai-Hulud worm on October 8 that steals GitHub and npm tokens, cloud keys and AI coding-tool configs. A dev.to write-up of StepSecurity's teardown says revoking the stolen GitHub token triggers an rm -rf ~/, so the service must go first.
Publishers:dev.to · endorlabs.com Reality
- Evidence66
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives45
- Confidence62
buildOne report1 publisher Malicious commits hit Zod, nub and standard-schema repos, but no malicious version reached npm: Zod's release setup held and npm's scanner caught the nub version
Malicious commits landed in three GitHub repos, including Zod, yet npm's scanner held the only bad release submitted, @nubjs/nub@0.9.4. That outcome says little about whether a consuming team's own lockfile and install settings would have held.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher A pull_request_target trigger let any forked PR run code in DuckDuckGo's CI with secrets in reach
A HackerOne report says DuckDuckGo's semver-label.yml ran code from any forked pull request with secrets in its environment. Any team can search its own workflows for pull_request_target to find the same pattern.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+35
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence50
buildOne report1 publisher Next.js schedules an October 14 security release for three upstream dependency flaws, two of them Critical
Next.js will ship an out-of-band security update on October 14 for three upstream dependency vulnerabilities, two rated Critical and one High. Until then, the useful preparation is confirming which Next.js build each production app actually serves.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap0
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence50
buildConfirmed4 publishers Tensorlake's npm SDK 0.5.144 runs a credential-stealing worm from a preinstall hook at install time, Socket reported. According to Socket's analysis, any secret reachable from a workstation or build runner that installed the release may be exposed.
Perspective Coverage
4 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 44%
- Operator
- Operator 50%
- Investor
- Investor 6%
Reality
- Evidence74
- Adoption25
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives35
- Confidence72
Checkmarx says function-flag, malicious since July 2025 and downloaded more than 37,000 times, is still on npm with no advisory flagging it. Advisory-based scanners have nothing to match, so finding it means checking lockfiles for the campaign's eight names.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 43%
- Operator
- Operator 50%
- Investor
- Investor 7%
Reality
- Evidence70
- Adoption20
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives55
- Confidence68
Unit 42 finds supply-chain malware fetching its C2 addresses from blockchain smart contracts
Unit 42 says supply-chain attackers have moved command-and-control into blockchain smart contracts, so one transaction can re-point an entire botnet or worm. Defenders' useful choke points are now developer machines, CI runners and the chain lookup itself.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption45
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives45
- Confidence55
CrowdSec kept a leaver's GitHub access open so he could finish some work, his laptop was hit by the TanStack npm compromise on May 11, and the repositories were copied on May 22 and posted to a forum on September 16.
Perspective Coverage
4 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 34%
- Operator
- Operator 51%
- Investor
- Investor 15%
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap−25
- Incentives65
- Confidence58
Electron Forge 8 marks six changes as breaking, chief among them a move to Node 22 and ESM
Electron Forge 8 flags six breaking changes, including a move to Node 22 and ESM and the removal of global module templates. Its npm trusted publishing entry concerns how maintainers ship Forge, so app teams' work lands in their runtime and config.
Reality
- Evidence60
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap−15
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence55
Attackers hid the malware trigger in the indexed-btree npm package inside a library method, sidestepping the install-script block npm 12 shipped in July. Install-time checks, including a look at package.json for hooks, pass a package that runs its payload on first use.
Reality
- Evidence66
- Adoption22
- Hype gap+14
- Incentives78
- Confidence60
buildOne report1 publisher Six Angular typosquats on npm claimed the real package's live version, 22.2.1
GitHub flagged six npm typosquats of Angular that claimed the live 22.2.1 version, five pulling a payload through the Wayback Machine. With the version number now correct, the defence has to sit at the package name and at whether install scripts run at all.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives70
- Confidence50
Earlier coverage
- Truffle Security finds 543,699 live credentials left public on GitHub for a median 784 days
Security · September 30, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
- OX Security ties 101 npm Baileys forks to a WhatsApp follower-farming campaign
Security · September 29, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
- Two actions-cool GitHub Actions resumed running the Mini Shai-Hulud stealer after coming back online
Security · September 25, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
- Crafted Open Graph text can reach code execution in Next.js 16.2 through 16.3.5
Security · September 23, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
- npm as free hosting: 24 packages whose only job is rendering a fake Cloudflare page
Security · August 25, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
- Shai-Hulud spreads by bumping a version number your dependency range already accepts
Build · August 31, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
- Mirage Kitten ships Node.js RATs through fake LinkedIn coding challenges
Security · September 1, 2026 · Confirmed4 publishers
- Kothamine RAT tunnels its commands through Tailscale's tailcat
Security · September 25, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- The PhantomRaven operator turned stolen CI/CD secrets into bug bounty payouts, CrowdStrike says
Security · September 18, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
- PhantomRaven hid its credential stealer in an npm dependency that scanners never fetch
Security · September 21, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
- Malicious npm package indexed-btree fires its loader from a runtime library call
Security · September 20, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers
- Joint advisory pins WaterPlum's fake recruiters to North Korea's 313 General Bureau
Security · September 18, 2026 · Confirmed8 publishers
- A pushed commit pulled MemTensor's npm and PyPI publish tokens out of its own release workflow
Security · September 23, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers