registry / verdaccio-okta-oauth / 38.1.6

verdaccio-okta-oauth@38.1.6

Verdaccio authentication plugin using Okta OAuth

AI Security Review

scanned 11d ago · by lpm-firewall-ai

Installing the package invokes an obfuscated payload. That payload can fetch text at runtime and evaluate it as code.

Static reason

One or more suspicious static signals were detected.; source matched previously finalized malicious package; routed for review

Trigger

npm preinstall

Impact

Arbitrary code execution in the installing user's environment.

Mechanism

install-time remote payload retrieval and eval

Attack narrative

The preinstall hook runs setup.mjs, which executes math_init.js directly or first downloads and executes Bun to run it. The unusually large obfuscated math_init.js imports host and network capabilities, retrieves response text, and evaluates it. This provides an install-time remote code-execution chain unrelated to the advertised OAuth plugin.

Rationale

Concrete preinstall execution, downloader behavior, obfuscation, and runtime eval establish malicious install-time remote code execution.

Evidence

package.jsonsetup.mjsmath_init.js

Network endpoints1

github.com/oven-sh/bun/releases/download/bun-v1.3.13/

OSV Corroboration

OpenSSF/OSV

Advisory

MAL-2026-11990

npm/verdaccio-okta-oauth is affected by the large-scale, self-propagating npm supply-chain worm of 2026-08-04 (the "Shai-Hulud: Here We Go Again" wave) — the same campaign that began with the compromise of the keyv and cacheable maintainer account. The listed version(s) were trojanized and republished by the worm after it reached an npm publish token belonging to a maintainer in this namespace; the payload enumerates every package a stolen token controls and republishes each with the same hook, so many packages under this scope were poisoned in the same short window. Every poisoned release adds a preinstall hook (`"preinstall": "node setup.mjs"`) that runs on a bare `npm install`, before any project code. setup.mjs downloads a standalone Bun runtime and runs a byte-identical, heavily obfuscated ~728 KB second-stage credential stealer (shipped as Math_Symbol.js / math_init.js). It harvests GitHub, npm, AWS, GCP, Azure, HashiCorp Vault and Kubernetes credentials plus generic secrets and private keys (TruffleHog-style sweep), reads CI/CD secrets and identifies build runners, then republishes further packages the stolen token can reach. Rather than a fixed command-and-control host, it exfiltrates stolen findings to attacker-created GitHub repositories (descriptions reading "Shai-Hulud: Here We Go Again") and over DNS. Treat any environment that installed an affected version (with install scripts enabled) as compromised: rotate and revoke all reachable credentials (npm and GitHub tokens, cloud keys, Vault/Kubernetes secrets, and CI org/repo secrets). Part of the August 2026 npm worm that poisoned 400+ packages across many organizations. --- ## Source: amazon-inspector (8a1e8f841ce4581c35eb47147e4667cc58cc0037ee7668f89f0d2196aaf9a876) The package's preinstall script (`node setup.mjs`) downloads the Bun runtime from github.com/oven-sh/bun/releases (v1.3.13) into a temporary directory, extracts and chmods it, then invokes it against a sibling file `math_init.js` via `execFileSync(bunBinary, [path.join(D, 'math_init.js')], {stdio:'inherit', cwd:D})`. `math_init.js` is a single-line ~727 KB obfuscator.io-style blob (rotating string-array via `WV8StW`, a large mixed number/string alphabet table, and an alphabet-permutation decoder `hc1jfK9`) that is not referenced by the plugin's visible runtime code in `dist/index.js`. Fetching a second-language runtime at install time solely to execute an obfuscated sibling file is the alternate-runtime-dropper pattern — it smuggles the executed code into an alien runtime so Node-based tooling does not resolve it, and the obfuscation prevents static verification of what the payload does. The package name matches the conventional name of a Verdaccio authentication plugin, but `repository.url` points at `github.com/servicetitan/uikit`, a UI-kit monorepo unrelated to Verdaccio plugin distribution — consistent with name-squatting installers who expect an Okta OAuth plugin for Verdaccio. ## Source: ghsa-malware (ab99ed07e1ae7af4dfebd7f0127bf3d8329ae1a74c416ad2cd85d7f23090503e) Any computer that has this package installed or running should be considered fully compromised. All secrets and keys stored on that computer should be rotated immediately from a different computer. The package should be removed, but as full control of the computer may have been given to an outside entity, there is no guarantee that removing the package will remove all malicious software resulting from installing it.

verdaccio-okta-oauth@38.1.6

AI Security Review

OSV Corroboration

Decision evidence

Source & flagged code

Source & flagged code

Findings

Source & flagged code