Malware authors have again managed to sneak malicious libraries into npm
Developers are the new target, suggests security researchers
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Automatedmalwaredetection systems have once again flagged several malicious packages lurking in the npm registry.
Masquerading as legitimateJavaScriptlibraries, the latest round of packages launchcryptominersonWindows,macOS, andLinuxmachines.
“Once again, this particular discovery is a further indication that developers are the new target for adversaries over the software they write,”writes SonaType, noting that all the packages were published by the same author.
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The SonaType researchers reported the malicious packages (named okhsa, klow, klown) to npm, only hours after their release, and they were unlisted by the same day, causing little to no damage.
Unclear intentions
Attacks on public repositories such as JavaScript’s npm, andPython’s PyPI aren’t nothing new, but have increased in their intensity off late. In fact, a recent report concluded that theincrease in supply chain attacksaimed at upstreamopen sourcepublic repositories has registered a whopping 650% year on year increase in 2021.
Npm isn’t immune to these infiltrations, and SonaType has previously shared that its automated systems have identifiedover 12000 suspicious and malicious npm packagessince 2019.
What’s interesting about these newly flagged (and subsequently removed) packages is that they didn’t employ any of the usual ploys to trick developers into installing them.
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“It isn’t clear how the author of these packages aims to target developers. There are no obvious signs observed that indicate a case of typosquatting or dependency hijacking. “Klow(n)” does impersonate the legitimate UAParser.js library on the surface, making this attack seem like a weak brandjacking attempt,” observe the researchers.
SonaType says it is now expanding malware detection capabilities that caught the packages in npm, to other ecosystems as well, such asPyPI.
With almost two decades of writing and reporting on Linux, Mayank Sharma would like everyone to think he’sTechRadar Pro’sexpert on the topic. Of course, he’s just as interested in other computing topics, particularly cybersecurity, cloud, containers, and coding.
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