This 2fa Phishing Scam Pwned A Developer - And Endangered Billions Of Npm Downloads

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• A phishing email was astatine nan bosom of nan attack.
• NPM squad quickly removed backdoored versions.
• 18 packages hit, pinch 2B+ downloads each week.

A caller integer proviso concatenation onslaught has targeted celebrated open-source npm packages pinch astatine slightest 2 cardinal downloads per week.

'I've been pwned'

On Sept. 8, Josh Junon, a package maintainer whose relationship was astatine nan halfway of nan attack, revealed that a blase phishing onslaught was to blame, impacting npm packages linked to his account.

Also known arsenic qix, Junon said, "I've been pwned. 2FA reset email, looked very legitimate."

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In a Bluesky thread, nan developer added that nan phishing email originated from a domain impersonating nan morganatic npmjs[.]com domain, and nan only parameter of fraud was nan usage of ".help" successful nan "support[at]npmjs[dot]help" phishing email. The email successful mobility claimed to beryllium a information notice, informing users that unless they updated their two-factor authentication (2FA) credentials, their accounts would beryllium temporarily locked starting Sept.10.

On Hacker News, Junon said he logged into nan clone website pinch a TOTP codification while connected mobile.

"The email was a '2FA update' email telling maine it's been 12 months since I updated 2FA. That should person been a reddish flag, but I've seen likewise dumb things coming from well-intentioned sites before," Junon commented. "Since npm has historically been successful interaction astir caller information enhancements, this didn't smell peculiarly unbelievable to my nose. The email went to nan npm-specific inbox, which is different measurement I tin verify them."

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They phished username, password (unique to npm), and a TOTP code. They moreover gave maine a caller TOTP codification to instal (lol), and it worked. Showed up successful Authy fine. Whoever made this put a ton of effort into it."

Josh Junon via Imgur

Malicious updates added to npm packages

Aikido Security researchers published a blog post outlining nan incident, successful which malicious updates were added to npm packages and pushed Monday astatine astir 13:16 UTC. In total, it is believed that 18 npm packages were compromised successful nan attack, including chalk, debug, ansi-styles, color-string, and simple-swizzle. These packages unsocial accounted for astir 1.1 cardinal downloads past week.

Node Package Manager (npm) is simply a package head for JavaScript's Node.js, allowing codification to beryllium freely downloaded, installed, and shared by nan unfastened root developer community.

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"The packages were updated to incorporate a portion of codification that would beryllium executed connected nan customer of a website, which silently intercepts crypto and web3 activity successful nan browser, manipulates wallet interactions, and rewrites costs destinations truthful that costs and approvals are redirected to attacker-controlled accounts without immoderate evident signs to nan user," nan researchers said.

According to nan team, nan index.js record successful these packages was modified pinch malicious code, obfuscated to hide a browser-based interceptor. Furthermore, a WHOIS lookup of nan phishing domain, npmjs[.]help, shows it was registered only past week.

When Aikido reached retired to Junon to make him alert of nan information incident, he began cleaning up nan packages earlier entree to his relationship was revoked, though it has since been restored. The npm squad said successful an update that each impacted packages person now been revoked.

Other maintainers person been affected

In a footnote to its blog post, Aikido Security said different maintainer was targeted, which could bespeak that we are yet to spot nan extremity of this integer proviso concatenation onslaught run -- a imaginable shared by Junon, who has said that different maintainers person besides been impacted, but nary further accusation has been disclosed astatine this time.

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"Other maintainers person been affected," Junon says. "Stay vigilant."