Incidentsnpm worm quietly armed 42 GitHub repos with hidden payload
JFrog says a campaign first judged harmless had in fact hijacked accounts since July and planted execution hooks for AI coding assistants.
27 Oct 2026
npm worm hijacked GitHub accounts, armed 42 repos with hidden payload
JFrog found a Miasma-family npm worm, dubbed 'testmetest', had secretly armed 42 real GitHub repositories from 11 owners since July, planting execution hooks for AI coding assistants like Claude, Gemini, Cursor and VS Code and using oversized polymorphic payloads to evade GitHub and scanner detection. The malware steals credentials, modifies repos and CI configs, self-replicates, and deploys a wiper that deletes the victim's home directory if the stolen GitHub token is revoked.
Disclosed 26 October 2026 · Record updated 27 October 2026
Impact
42 real GitHub repositories belonging to 11 owners were armed with credential-stealing, self-replicating malware and a destructive wiper; attackers also attempted internet-wide exploitation of a cPanel/WHM authentication bypass (CVE-2026-41940), though no downstream compromises were confirmed.
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IncidentsSources
- theregister.comhttps://theregister.com/security/2026/10/26/worm-armed-42-github-repos-by-hiding-a-payload-too-big-to-fail/5305570