The Shai-Hulud NPM Worm, When Supply Chains Bite Back
In September 2025 the ecosystem met something new: Shai-Hulud, a self-propagating npm worm. It started with a trusted package (@ctrl/tinycolor): attackers slipped in a malicious payload that ran at install time, grabbed secrets from developer machines and CI/CD runners, shipped them off to attacker servers, and then used those stolen credentials to poison dozens more packages. For the first time, supply chain malware didn’t just wait to be pulled: it spread by itself.