A big provide chain assault hit NPM after 16 in style Gluestack ‘react-native-aria’ packages with over 950,000 weekly downloads had been compromised to incorporate malicious code that acts as a distant entry trojan (RAT).
BleepingComputer decided that the compromise started on June 6 at 4:33 PM EST, when a brand new model of the react-native-aria/focus package deal was revealed to NPM. Since then, 16 of the 20 Gluestack react-native-aria packages have been compromised on NPM, with the menace actors publishing a brand new model as just lately as two hours in the past.
Supply: BleepingComputer
The availability chain assault was found by cybersecurity agency Aikido Safety, who found obfuscated code injected into the lib/index.js file for the next packages:
| Package deal Identify | Model | Weekly Downloads |
| react-native-aria/button | 0.2.11 | 51,000 |
| react-native-aria/checkbox | 0.2.11 | 81,000 |
| react-native-aria/combobox | 0.2.10 | 51,000 |
| react-native-aria/disclosure | 0.2.9 | 3 |
| react-native-aria/focus | 0.2.10 | 100,000 |
| react-native-aria/interactions | 0.2.17 | 125,000 |
| react-native-aria/listbox | 0.2.10 | 51,000 |
| react-native-aria/menu | 0.2.16 | 22,000 |
| react-native-aria/overlays | 0.3.16 | 96,000 |
| react-native-aria/radio | 0.2.14 | 78,000 |
| react-native-aria/change | 0.2.5 | 477 |
| react-native-aria/toggle | 0.2.12 | 81,000 |
| react-native-aria/utils | 0.2.13 | 120,000 |
| gluestack-ui/utils | 0.1.17 | 55,000 |
| react-native-aria/separator | 0.2.7 | 65 |
| react-native-aria/slider | 0.2.13 | 51,000 |
These packages are extremely popular, with roughly 960,000 weekly downloads, making this a provide chain assault that might have widespread penalties.
The malicious code is closely obfuscated and is appended to the final line of supply code within the file, padded with many areas, so it isn’t simply noticed when utilizing the code viewer on the NPM website.
Supply: BleepingComputer
Aikido informed BleepingComputer that the malicious code is sort of equivalent to a distant entry trojan in one other NPM compromise they found final month.
The researcher’s evaluation of the earlier marketing campaign explains that the distant entry trojan will connect with the attackers’ command and management server and obtain instructions to execute.
These instructions embrace:
- cd – Change present working listing
- ss_dir – Reset listing to script’s path
- ss_fcd:<path> – Pressure change listing to <path>
- ss_upf:f,d – Add single file f to vacation spot d
- ss_upd:d,dest – Add all recordsdata underneath listing d to vacation spot dest
- ss_stop – Units a cease flag to interrupt present add course of
- Some other enter – Handled as a shell command, executed through child_process.exec()
The trojan additionally performs Home windows PATH hijacking by prepending a faux Python path (%LOCALAPPDATApercentProgramsPythonPython3127) to the PATH surroundings variable, permitting the malware to silently override professional python or pip instructions to execute malicious binaries.
Aikido sercurity researcher Charlie Eriksen has tried to contact Gluestack concerning the compromise by creating GitHub points on every of the mission’s repositories, however there has not been any response right now.
“No response from package deal maintainers (it is morning on a saturday within the US which is prob precisely why its occurring now),” Arkido informed BleepingComputer.
“NPM we now have contacted and reported every package deal, this can be a course of that often takes a number of days for NPM to deal with although.”
Aikido additionally attributes this assault to the identical menace actors who compromised 4 different NPM packages earlier this week named biatec-avm-gas-station, cputil-node, lfwfinance/sdk, and lfwfinance/sdk-dev.
BleepingComputer reached out to Gluestack concerning the compromised packages however has not obtained a reply right now.
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