Hackers may have slipped malware into popular axios package: report [Updated]

Update 01/04/26 – 05:55 pm (IST): Google’s Threat Intelligence Group has now attributed this attack to UNC1069, a North Korean-linked threat actor that’s been active since at least 2018. Principal Analyst Austin Larsen confirmed the attribution on X, citing the group’s use of WAVESHAPER.V2 — an updated backdoor previously tied to the group — along with overlapping command-and-control infrastructure.

UNC1069 typically goes after cryptocurrency and DeFi targets. Earlier this year, the group was linked to a separate scheme involving AI deepfakes to steal session tokens. Google has published a full technical breakdown on their blog.

Original article published on March 31, 2026, follows:

Hackers appear to have compromised axios, one of the most widely used coding tools in the JavaScript world, by sneaking a malicious package into a new release published today.

Axios gets downloaded over 100 million times a week on npm, the main platform developers use to grab coding packages. It’s embedded in apps, websites, and backend services across the industry, so you can guess why a single bad version landing quietly is pretty bad news.

According to security firm Socket, the compromised versions are [email protected] and [email protected]. Both were pushed to npm within 39 minutes of each other. The malicious package those versions pull in, [email protected], did not exist before today. Socket said it caught the package as malware within minutes of it going live. Socket’s automated scanner flagged it as malware within minutes of it going live.

The affected axios version doesn’t appear in the project’s official GitHub release history at all, which is unusual. Axios normally publishes tagged releases alongside its npm updates. From what Socket’s team was able to determine, a maintainer account appears to have been hijacked, and the attacker’s access level is reportedly higher than the legitimate maintainers’, meaning they couldn’t simply revoke it themselves. They’ve since asked npm to step in.

Once installed, the malicious package quietly runs a script in the background that pulls down additional payloads from an external server, depending on whether you’re on Windows, Mac, or Linux.

On Mac, it installs what researchers describe as a remote-access trojan, essentially giving attackers a backdoor into the machine. On Windows, it disguises itself using system-looking file names to avoid security tools. The report also highlights that researchers from Elastic Security were able to capture and analyze the Mac payload before the attacker’s server went offline.

Security researcher Feross, who first highlighted this on X, noted that AI-assisted coding tools are making this kind of attack more dangerous, because more developers are letting automated tools install packages without reviewing them first.

Developer Wes Bos also warned his followers to hold off on any installs or deploys, noting that even projects that don’t directly use axios could be affected if it’s buried somewhere in their dependencies.

The affected versions appear to have since been removed from npm. Socket has a full breakdown of what the malware does on their blog. If you’ve run npm install in the past several hours, it’s worth checking your dependency files for any of the flagged versions.

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