Over 170 npm and PyPI packages compromised in new attack

On 11 May, threat actor TeamPCP carried out another software supply chain attack and compromised more than 170 packages across npm and PyPI, including packages from TanStack, Mistral AI, UiPath and OpenSearch. Researchers at StepSecurity believe the attacker used OpenID Connect tokens presumed stolen in an earlier campaign. As with the Shai-Hulud attacks late last year, this one propagated itself, publishing further malicious packages as soon as it obtained the necessary credentials.

What this means for your organisation

Everyone who builds software pulls code from npm or PyPI, and most do so without pausing at every version bump. A self-spreading attack of this kind is not aimed at your product but at the secrets in your build environment: cloud keys, access tokens, signing keys. Once those leak, the problem is no longer confined to the development team. This is also a matter NIS2 addresses directly through its supply chain security requirements.

Berigo recommends

• Pin dependencies to specific versions with a lockfile, and disable automatic execution of install scripts in the build environment.
• Review which secrets your build agents can reach, and remove everything that does not need to be there.
• Rotate tokens and keys that have been exposed in the build environment since the previous Shai-Hulud wave.
• Check whether any of the affected packages appear in your own projects, using the sources below as a starting point.

Source

• stepsecurity.io
• safedep.io
• socket.dev