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PhantomRaven npm credential harvesting campaign leverages invisible dependencies

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3 unique sources, 5 articles

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An ongoing npm credential harvesting campaign dubbed PhantomRaven has been active since August 2025. The malware steals npm tokens, GitHub credentials, and CI/CD secrets from developers worldwide. New attack waves occurred between November 2025 and February 2026, distributing 88 packages via 50 disposable accounts. At least 126 npm packages have been infected, resulting in over 86,000 downloads. The attack uses Remote Dynamic Dependencies (RDD) to hide malicious code in externally hosted packages, evading npm security scans. The campaign exploits AI hallucinations to create plausible-sounding package names, a technique known as slopsquatting. As of October 30, 2025, the attacker-controlled URL can serve any kind of malware, initially serving harmless code before pushing a malicious version. The malware scans the developer environment for email addresses and gathers information about the CI/CD environment. The npm ecosystem allows easy publishing and low friction for packages, with lifecycle scripts executing arbitrary code at install time. As of October 29, 2025, at least 80 of the infected packages remain active. Researchers have discovered a malicious npm package named "@acitons/artifact" that typosquats the legitimate "@actions/artifact" package to target GitHub-owned repositories. The package incorporated a post-install hook to download and run malware in versions 4.0.12 to 4.0.17, and has been downloaded 47,405 times. The malware specifically targets repositories owned by the GitHub organization, indicating a targeted attack against GitHub.

Timeline

  1. 29.10.2025 16:00 5 articles · 4mo ago

    PhantomRaven npm credential harvesting campaign discovered

    The campaign has been active since August 2025, infecting at least 126 npm packages with over 86,000 downloads. The attack uses Remote Dynamic Dependencies (RDD) to hide malicious code and exploits AI hallucinations to create plausible-sounding package names. The malware collects tokens for NPM, GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins, and CircleCI. The campaign uses three data exfiltration methods: HTTP GET requests, HTTP POST requests, and WebSocket connections. The malware profiles the infected device to determine the target’s value and searches for email addresses in environment variables. As of October 30, 2025, the attacker-controlled URL can serve any kind of malware, initially serving harmless code before pushing a malicious version. The malware scans the developer environment for email addresses and gathers information about the CI/CD environment. The npm ecosystem allows easy publishing and low friction for packages, with lifecycle scripts executing arbitrary code at install time. As of October 29, 2025, at least 80 of the infected packages remain active. Researchers have discovered a malicious npm package named "@acitons/artifact" that typosquats the legitimate "@actions/artifact" package to target GitHub-owned repositories. The package incorporated a post-install hook to download and run malware in versions 4.0.12 to 4.0.17, and has been downloaded 47,405 times. The malware specifically targets repositories owned by the GitHub organization, indicating a targeted attack against GitHub. Another npm package named "8jfiesaf83" with similar functionality was identified but is no longer available for download, with 1,016 downloads recorded. New attack waves from the PhantomRaven campaign occurred between November 2025 and February 2026, distributing 88 packages via 50 disposable accounts. 81 of the malicious PhantomRaven packages are still available in the npm registry. The threat actor used 'slopsquatting' to mimic established projects like Babel and GraphQL Codegen. The infrastructure remains consistent across all four observed waves of the PhantomRaven campaign, with domains containing the word 'artifact' that are hosted on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and lack a TLS certificate. The payload was nearly identical across all waves, with 257 of the 259 lines of code remaining unchanged. The attackers evolved operationally, rotating npm and email accounts, changing npm package metadata, and modifying PHP endpoints. The attackers published more frequently in the more recent attacks, with four packages added in a single day, on February 18.

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