Supply-chain threat intelligence

Incident detail

criticalnpm·maintainer compromise·osv

Malicious code in subsearch (npm)

subsearch

Risk score

92

AI summary

Indexed incident for subsearch (npm).

Description

The package's main entry index.js is the only file of substance and is wrapped in obfuscator.io string-array + RC4 obfuscation that hides every literal (module names, URL octets, exec arguments). On require(), the deobfuscated code assembles a bare-IP HTTP URL by concatenating four octets via .concat('.'), performs an HTTP GET, writes the response body into os.tmpdir() via fs.writeFileSync(path.join(os.tmpdir(), <name>), I.data, {flag:'w+'}), and immediately executes the dropped file with child_process.exec(..., {windowsHide:true, cwd: os.tmpdir()}). process.on('uncaughtException',...) is registered to suppress errors. package.json has empty description, empty author, no repository, no homepage — the package advertises no functionality; its only effect on import is the dropper. The bare-IP destination has no TLS, no pinning, and no signature verification, so the attacker can swap the executed payload at any time.

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.

Technical details

Affected versions

=1.0.2=1.0.3

Indicators

  • Advisory IDs
    90%
  • affected version=1.0.275%
  • affected version=1.0.375%

Timeline

  1. Advisory published
  2. Indexed by ThreatPkg

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