First Shai-Hulud Worm Clones Emerge

The first Shai-Hulud worm clones emerged only days after TeamPCP released the malware’s source code on GitHub, Ox Security reports. Shai-Hulud was first used in supply chain attacks against the open source software ecosystem in September 2025, and then again in November, in campaigns that hit hundreds of NPM packages and likely infected thousands of developers. The malware was designed to steal credentials, API keys, tokens, and other secrets from the infected machines and use them for self-propagation by injecting itself into the packages maintained by the victims and publishing malicious versions on their behalf. It re-emerged in April, in supply chain attacks attributed to the TeamPCP hacking group, which mounted several campaigns against the open source software community since March, including the Trivy, Bitwarden, Checkmarx, SAP, and TanStack incidents. Last week, several repositories containing the Shai-Hulud worm’s source code briefly appeared on GitHub, accompanied by an announcement from TeamPCP and BreachForums that encouraged miscreants to use the code in a supply chain challenge. Security researchers promptly warned of a surge in activity associated with the malware following the source code’s release, and cybercriminals were quick to adapt the worm and start using it in fresh attacks. According to Ox Security, a threat actor published four NPM packages containing infostealer malware, including one that contains the Shai-Hulud code. Dubbed ‘chalk-tempalte’, the package is a direct clone of the worm, does not use obfuscation, and implements its own command-and-control (C&C) server and private key. “By analyzing the malware’s source code, the same patterns from previous Shai-Hulud attacks are immediately recognizable, as expected. This includes uploading stolen credentials to a new GitHub repository,” Ox says. The other three packages published by the threat actor, all using typo-squatting to infect Axios users, are different from Shai-Hulud, and one of them ensnares the infected machines into a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet. The four packages, ‘@deadcode09284814/axios-util’, ‘axois-utils’, ‘chalk-tempalte’, and ‘color-style-utils’, have a combined weekly download count of over 2,600. “We’re now seeing a single actor with multiple techniques and infostealer types spreading malicious code onto NPM, as it’s just the first phase of an upcoming wave of supply chain attacks coming,” Ox warns. Related: OpenAI Hit by TanStack Supply Chain Attack Related: Build Application Firewalls Aim to Stop the Next Supply Chain Attack Related: Vendor Says Daemon Tools Supply Chain Attack Contained Related: Gemini CLI Vulnerability Could Have Led to Code Execution, Supply Chain Attack WRITTEN BY Ionut Arghire Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek. 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