Malicious code in chalk-utils (npm)
On npm install, postinstall.js runs a credential and cryptocurrency stealer against the installer's machine. It reads ~/.npmrc (extracting _authToken and npm_* tokens), ~/.git-credentials, and ~/.env (extracting values keyed by token/secret/password/api/aws/gcp/stripe patterns), then iterates a hardcoded list of 71 browser extension IDs for major crypto wallets (MetaMask, Phantom, Coinbase Wallet, Exodus, Trust, Binance, OKX, Ledger Live, Trezor, and others) across Chrome/Brave/Edge/Chromium/Vivaldi/Opera profiles, reading each extension's Local Extension Settings LevelDB .log files and applying regexes for vault, seed, privateKey, mnemonic, password, and encrypted. It additionally walks ~/Documents, ~/Desktop, and ~/Downloads for filenames matching crypto keywords (seed, backup, wallet, phrase, metamask, phantom, vault, key, private), scores file contents against a BIP-39 word list, and harvests any file with >=8 BIP-39 matches along with a 100-character content preview. Harvested data (plus os.hostname() and os.userInfo().username) is POSTed in cleartext to http://149.28.127.35:8888, a bare-IP C2 endpoint overridable via a C2_URL environment variable to support endpoint rotation. The package name chalk-utils masquerades as belonging to the chalk ecosystem while index.js is a dummy stub whose comment reads lodash-js — Just a dummy module. The real payload is in postinstall.js, and postinstall.js self-describes as Token harvester + Crypto wallet scanner. Runs on npm install. Silent. Zero trace.
MAL-2026-3755 is recorded against 1 package.
Published on 14 May 2026 and last revised on 15 May 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from OSV.
www.npmjs.com (Package)
www.npmjs.com (Package)
www.npmjs.com (Package)
Details
Affected Packages
| Software | From version | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| chalk-utils | — | — |
References
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