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Keyv and friends compromised in active Shai-Hulud supply chain attack

https://www.aikido.dev/blog/keyv-and-friends-compromised-in-npm-supply-chain-attack
199cimi_ | | 104 | HN
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xnorswap | parent | next
At this point, any package adding a pre-install hook where there previously was not one should be denied and treated with extreme suspicion.

It's time pre-install / post-install hooks were killed off. Start with a moratorium on any new ones.

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mittermayr | parent | next
Does anyone happen to have a grep or similar that helps me check if this is showing up anywhere in the trillions of files in node_modules (or pnpm store)?
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byutifu | parent | next
This article has a lot of information and ways to check & clean: https://safedep.io/keyv-npm-supply-chain-compromise/
rhdunn | parent | next
The what happened section mentions the addition of the `setup.mjs` and `Math_Symbol.js`, along with a change in `package.json` to add `"preinstall": "node setup.mjs"`, so presumably checking for any of those would be a good indication to check further.

For example:

    find . -type f | grep -P "/Math_Symbol\.js$"
yread | root | parent
Crucially, Math_Symbol.js that is almost 800KB, not the innocent 1KB one from regenerate-unicode-properties
orheep | parent
find . -type d -name node_modules -prune -exec find {} \( -name setup.mjs -o -name math_init.js -o -name Math_Symbol.js \) \; 2>/dev/null
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avaer | parent | next
I am kind of surprised GitHub doesn't seem to have built a simple classifier for public repos to proactively lock the account of anyone uploading such obviously fishy things (for their own good, at least before the repo is publicly findable), so it can't be used as a rendezvous.

Surely Github's software is good enough that an intern can slop the 80/20 together in a day? It would be an actually good use of AI spending.

hulitu | parent
> I am kind of surprised GitHub doesn't seem to have built a simple classifier for public repos to proactively lock the account of anyone uploading such obviously fishy things (for their own good, at least before the repo is publicly findable), so it can't be used as a rendezvous.

Maybe that's the idea. Regards, the <insert your favourite 3 letter agency here>

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ethanwillis | parent | next
You know with all this AGI swirling around nowadays that is stronger than nation state hackers you think one of these companies would demonstrate just how capable they are by defending public infrastructure.

Unless...

Maybe in 6 months.

codeduck | parent | next
Oh boy, it's a big one.
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thinkingemoji | parent | next
No way to prevent this says only package manager where this regularly happens
insanitybit | parent | next
This is the most boring comment posted on every one of these. NPM is by no means the worst offender here and offers a ton of solutions to this, lots of package managers are behind it or equivalent.

NPM gets targeted a lot because it's popular. That's it.

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Catloafdev | parent | next
I mean what are these devs doing that they are day-1 updating npm packages still?

How many instances of this are required before npm package maintainers learn?

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cute_boi | parent | next
I think npm can use chatgpt/claude for each published package to detect these types of attack? And if it sees they can restrict the package from making any changes.
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ftlps | parent | next
aikido.dev: SAST, AI code analysis and therefore a website that uses 100% CPU and prevents scrolling.

To the point of the article: I don't know why GitHub still allows the release feature. It is complete insanity. Tar archives must be constructed manually and checked for leaked keys etc.

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vlovich123 | parent
> Update — August 4, 2026, 13:37 CEST: At least 868 packages (across 1381 versions) have been compromised by the worm, with a combined total of over 2 billion monthly installs at the time of writing.

This is such lazy or click baiting writing. Who cares how many installations there are per month normally? The high install numbers are almost certainly from running in CI where such secrets don’t exist. How many installs actually occur in a non CI environment and of those how many were the compromised version?

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