Detects compromised axios versions (1.14.1, 0.30.4) and IOCs from the March 31, 2026 supply chain attack.
On March 31, 2026, the npm account of the lead axios maintainer was hijacked. Two malicious versions were published, injecting a phantom dependency plain-crypto-js@4.2.1 whose sole purpose is to execute a cross-platform RAT (Remote Access Trojan) via a postinstall hook. The malware self-destructs after execution — it deletes setup.js, overwrites its own package.json with a clean stub, and detaches from the process tree via nohup — making post-infection detection non-trivial.
Both versions were unpublished by npm within ~3 hours, but any npm install that ran during that window is potentially compromised.
📖 Full technical analysis: StepSecurity — axios Compromised on npm