A classy supply-chain assault has emerged concentrating on Home windows programs by compromised npm packages, marking a essential vulnerability in open-source software program distribution.
Between October 21 and 26, 2025, menace actors printed 17 malicious npm packages containing 23 releases designed to ship Vidar infostealer malware.
The marketing campaign exploited the belief builders place in package deal registries, leveraging legitimate-appearing packages that masqueraded as Telegram bot helpers, icon libraries, and forks of fashionable tasks together with Cursor and React.
The assault leveraged two lately created npm accounts, aartje and saliii229911, which printed packages downloaded over 2,240 occasions earlier than elimination from the registry.
This distribution methodology represents a paradigm shift for Vidar, traditionally unfold by phishing emails with malicious Workplace paperwork.
The misleading packaging and seemingly respectable performance allowed the malicious code to propagate extensively earlier than detection.
Bundle custom-tg-bot-plan presents like a respectable SDK on its npm web page (Supply – DATADOG Safety Labs)
Datadog Safety Labs safety researchers recognized the marketing campaign by their GuardDog static analyzer, which flagged suspicious indicators together with postinstall script execution and course of spawning operations.
The invention revealed that each one packages executed an identical assault chains by postinstall scripts, with some variants utilizing PowerShell instructions embedded immediately in package deal.json recordsdata.
An infection Mechanism and Technical Breakdown
The assault demonstrates outstanding simplicity in execution. When builders put in compromised packages, postinstall scripts mechanically triggered, downloading an encrypted ZIP archive from bullethost.cloud infrastructure.
The downloader scripts used hardcoded credentials to extract the archive, retrieving bridle.exe, a Go-compiled Vidar variant beforehand unseen in npm distributions.
The malware then executed with system privileges, initiating the knowledge theft course of.
This Vidar variant collects delicate information together with browser credentials, cookies, cryptocurrency wallets, and system recordsdata earlier than exfiltrating stolen data by command-and-control infrastructure.
The malware discovers energetic C2 servers by querying hardcoded Telegram and Steam throwaway accounts containing recurrently up to date C2 domains.
After profitable information exfiltration, the malware deletes traces of itself, complicating post-compromise detection.
The marketing campaign represents a classy understanding of npm ecosystem vulnerabilities.
Risk actors rotated between a number of C2 domains and applied variations in postinstall script implementations, prone to evade pattern-based detection programs.
All affected packages remained dwell on npm for roughly two weeks, establishing this as some of the consequential npm-based malware campaigns concentrating on enterprise improvement environments and particular person builders worldwide.
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