Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (NPMGITCODAIKWAS1773555952)
The details regarding individual company incidents & reports gives you full view from every side.
Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of npm, Inc.'s Cyber Attack and lateral movement inside company's environment.
- Overview of affected data sets, including SSNs and PHI, and why they materially increase incident severity.
- How Rankiteo’s incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score.
- How this cyber incident impacts npm, Inc. Rankiteo cyber scoring and cyber rating.
- Rankiteo’s MITRE ATT&CK correlation analysis for this incident, with associated confidence level.
Full Incident Analysis Transcript
In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the npm, Inc. breach identified under incident ID NPMGITCODAIKWAS1773555952.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of npm, Inc.'s information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/npm-inc-, the number of followers: 11914, the industry type: Software Development and the number of employees: 18 employees
After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 549 and after the incident was 528 with a difference of -21 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.
In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on npm, Inc. and their customers.
On 03 March 2025, Wasmer disclosed Supply Chain Attack issues under the banner "GitHub, npm, and VS Code Repositories Compromised by Glassworm’s Invisible Unicode Attack".
Researchers at Aikido Security uncovered a sophisticated campaign by the threat actor Glassworm, which compromised at least 151 GitHub repositories, npm packages, and VS Code extensions by embedding malicious payloads in invisible Unicode characters.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting GitHub repositories, npm packages and VS Code extensions, and exposing Credentials, secrets, and sensitive data.
Formal response steps have not been shared publicly yet.
The case underscores how Ongoing, teams are taking away lessons such as The attack's sophistication highlights the need for automated tooling capable of detecting zero-width Unicode characters and the risks of supply chain attacks leveraging AI-generated camouflage, and recommending next steps like Implement automated tooling to detect zero-width Unicode characters in code repositories, Enhance monitoring for unusual code modifications, such as version bumps and minor refactors and Strengthen credential security to prevent unauthorized access to repositories.
Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.
MITRE ATT&CK® Correlation Analysis
Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Supply Chain Compromise: Compromise Software Supply Chain (T1195.002) with high confidence (95%), supported by evidence indicating compromised at least 151 GitHub repositories, npm packages, and VS Code extensions and Valid Accounts (T1078) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating leveraging stolen credentials to propagate further. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified Command and Scripting Interpreter: JavaScript (T1059.007) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating executes them via eval(), deploying a second-stage payload and Serverless Execution (T1648) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating hidden decoder extracts these bytes and executes them. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Compromise Client Software Binary (T1554) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating malicious payloads in invisible Unicode characters in code repositories and Server Software Component: Web Shell (T1505.003) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating hidden VNC servers and SOCKS proxies for persistent remote access. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Obfuscated Files or Information: Software Packing (T1027.002) with high confidence (95%), supported by evidence indicating invisible Unicode characters (zero-width whitespace) in code editors, Obfuscated Files or Information: Command Obfuscation (T1027.010) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating unicode Private Use Area characters appear as zero-width whitespace, Hide Artifacts: Hidden Window (T1564.003) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating hidden decoder extracts these bytes and executes them via eval(), and Masquerading: Match Legitimate Name or Location (T1036.005) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating version bumps and minor refactors to blend with legitimate code. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Steal Application Access Token (T1528) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating enabling token theft, credential harvesting, and secret exfiltration and Unsecured Credentials: Credentials In Files (T1552.001) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating credentials, secrets, and sensitive data compromised. Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified Account Discovery: Local Account (T1087.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating credential harvesting and secret exfiltration. Under the Command and Control tactic, the analysis identified Ingress Tool Transfer (T1105) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating deploying a second-stage payload, Application Layer Protocol: DNS (T1071.004) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating solana blockchain for command-and-control (C2) operations, and Encrypted Channel: Asymmetric Cryptography (T1573.002) with moderate to high confidence (75%), supported by evidence indicating blockchain transactions are immutable. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating solana-based C2 infrastructure for secret exfiltration and Transfer Data to Cloud Account (T1537) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating blockchain-based exfiltration complicates mitigation. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Resource Hijacking (T1496) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating hidden VNC servers and SOCKS proxies for persistent remote access. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- npm, Inc. Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/npm-inc-/incident/NPMGITCODAIKWAS1773555952
- npm, Inc. CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/npm-inc-
- npm, Inc. Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/npmgitcodaikwas1773555952-github-reworm-npm-wasmer-anomalyco-vs-code-marketplace-cyber-attack-march-2026/
- npm, Inc. CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/npm-inc-/history
- npm, Inc. CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/malicious-packages-using-invisible-unicode-found-in-151-github-repos-and-vs-code
- Rankiteo A.I CyberSecurity Rating methodology: https://www.rankiteo.com/Images/rankiteo_algo.pdf
- Rankiteo TPRM Scoring methodology: https://static.rankiteo.com/model/rankiteo_tprm_methodology.pdf