Socket’s Risk Analysis Workforce has uncovered a classy phishing marketing campaign involving 175 malicious npm packages that collectively accrued over 26,000 downloads.
The marketing campaign, dubbed “Beamglea” primarily based on constant artifacts throughout all packages, represents a novel abuse of npm’s public registry and the unpkg.com CDN to host redirect scripts concentrating on 135+ industrial, expertise, and power firms worldwide.
The packages themselves don’t execute malicious code throughout set up, making them notably insidious as they exploit the npm ecosystem as free internet hosting infrastructure for credential harvesting operations.
Credential phishing pages (Supply – Socket.dev)
Whereas the packages’ randomized names following the sample redirect-[a-z0-9]{6} make unintentional developer set up unlikely, the substantial obtain counts doubtless embrace safety researchers, automated scanners, and CDN infrastructure analyzing the packages after disclosure.
The menace actors developed complete Python tooling to automate your complete marketing campaign, enabling them to create victim-specific HTML phishing lures themed as buy orders and venture paperwork.
The origin and that means of “beamglea” stays unclear, although it might characterize a codename or inside reference utilized by the attackers.
Socket.dev analysts recognized the marketing campaign as a part of their routine scanning operations, constructing on preliminary findings by Paul McCarty at Security who first found the phishing infrastructure on September 24, 2025.
The researchers famous that the majority packages related to this marketing campaign stay dwell on the time of writing, prompting quick petitions for his or her removing from the npm registry alongside suspension of the menace actors’ accounts.
The marketing campaign demonstrates outstanding sophistication in its technical implementation, representing a regarding evolution in provide chain abuse strategies.
Previous to this disclosure, the time period “beamglea” had nearly no on-line presence, making it an efficient monitoring identifier for this particular operation concentrating on organizations throughout a number of vital infrastructure sectors.
Automated Package deal Era Infrastructure
The menace actors developed subtle Python automation to streamline their operations, using redirect_generator.py scripts and PyInstaller-compiled executables for ease of deployment.
The automation course of demonstrates professional-level operational safety planning and systematic sufferer concentrating on capabilities.
The core automation takes three inputs: a JavaScript template file named beamglea_template.js, the sufferer’s e mail deal with, and the vacation spot phishing URL.
The system then processes these parts by way of a five-step workflow that begins with npm authentication verification and proceeds by way of template processing, bundle creation, publication, and HTML lure era.
The random bundle title era perform creates distinctive identifiers utilizing a six-character suffix of lowercase letters and numbers, guaranteeing every marketing campaign stays distinct whereas following the recognizable redirect- prefix sample.
The JavaScript payload embedded in every bundle stays remarkably easy but efficient. Every beamglea.js file accommodates a processAndRedirect() perform that appends the sufferer’s e mail as a URL fragment, leveraging the truth that fragments seem after the # image and don’t seem in commonplace server entry logs.
This system creates an look of legitimacy when phishing pages pre-fill login kinds with the sufferer’s e mail deal with.
def generate_random_package_name(prefix=”redirect-“):
# Generates random 6-character suffix
suffix = ”.be part of(random.selections(string.ascii_lowercase + string. Digits, ok=6))
return prefix + suffix
# Template processing replaces placeholders with victim-specific information
template_js = load_template(‘beamglea_template.js’)
final_js = template_js.exchange(“{{EMAIL}}”, e mail).exchange(“{{URL}}”, redirect_url)
with open(“beamglea.js”, “w”, encoding=”utf-8″) as f:
f.write(final_js)
The automation generates HTML lures with particular enterprise doc themes designed to bypass suspicion, using filenames that mimic reputable buy orders, technical specs, and venture paperwork.
All HTML information comprise the marketing campaign identifier nb830r6x of their meta tags, offering constant monitoring throughout the 630+ generated lures distributed throughout the 175 packages.
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