Attackers exploited the compromised GitHub account of keyv's maintainer to push credential-stealing malware across their entire package portfolio on npm This article explores npm package compromised. . The breach occurred on August 4, 2026, marking one of the largest npm supply chain incidents with malicious code spreading rapidly to hundreds of unrelated packages within hours.
Research on this incident was exclusively shared by Aikido with ZeroOwl. The same maintainer also owns several other heavily used caching utilities such as cacheable (29 million downloads a month), flat-cache (565 million downloads a month), file-entry-cache (557 million downloads a month), cache-manager, cacheable-request, and the @cacheable scoped packages.
Because the attacker pushed malicious files directly to each repository's main branch and then quickly released a new update, the poisoned versions were published on npm with valid provenance signatures generated by GitHub Actions, appearing legitimate to anyone auditing supply chain integrity. Keyv's npm package was compromised. Once triggered, setup.mjs functions as a heavily obfuscated dropper that quietly downloads the Bun JavaScript runtime from a GitHub release URL and uses it to launch the true payload, Math_Symbol.js, without any visible prompt to the developer running the installation.
It harvests authentication tokens from npm registry configuration files (.npmrc), GitHub CLI credentials including personal access tokens, session tokens, and OIDC tokens, as well as AWS access keys and session tokens directly from the ~/.aws/credentials file.
