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MAL-2026-11739

Dashboard / Malicious Package / MAL-2026-11739

MAL-2026-11739

Published: 4 Aug 2026Last Modified: 5 Aug 2026Aliases:

Summary: Malicious code in @ornikar/apollo-link-timeout (npm)

Details: npm/@ornikar/apollo-link-timeout is affected by the large-scale, self-propagating npm supply-chain worm of 2026-08-04 (the "Shai-Hulud: Here We Go Again" wave) — the same campaign that began with the compromise of the keyv and cacheable maintainer account. The listed version(s) were trojanized and republished by the worm after it reached an npm publish token belonging to a maintainer in this namespace; the payload enumerates every package a stolen token controls and republishes each with the same hook, so many packages under this scope were poisoned in the same short window. Every poisoned release adds a preinstall hook (`"preinstall": "node setup.mjs"`) that runs on a bare `npm install`, before any project code. setup.mjs downloads a standalone Bun runtime and runs a byte-identical, heavily obfuscated ~728 KB second-stage credential stealer (shipped as Math_Symbol.js / math_init.js). It harvests GitHub, npm, AWS, GCP, Azure, HashiCorp Vault and Kubernetes credentials plus generic secrets and private keys (TruffleHog-style sweep), reads CI/CD secrets and identifies build runners, then republishes further packages the stolen token can reach. Rather than a fixed command-and-control host, it exfiltrates stolen findings to attacker-created GitHub repositories (descriptions reading "Shai-Hulud: Here We Go Again") and over DNS. Treat any environment that installed an affected version (with install scripts enabled) as compromised: rotate and revoke all reachable credentials (npm and GitHub tokens, cloud keys, Vault/Kubernetes secrets, and CI org/repo secrets). Part of the August 2026 npm worm that poisoned 400+ packages across many organizations. Source: amazon-inspector (e7e19a0c40f2f14b9b213c352335b6078bec8a9e7aa8aa8b1169c4ccd2b7d6b8) package.json declares `preinstall: node setup.mjs`. setup.mjs is obfuscated (hex-mangled identifiers, per-function string-map indirection hiding URLs, filenames, and shell commands) and at npm install time downloads a Bun runtime zip from github.com/oven-sh/bun releases into an OS tmpdir, extracts the `bun` binary, chmods it 0o755, and invokes it via execFileSync to run the co-shipped math_init.js on the installer's machine. math_init.js is ~720KB, uses string-array rotation obfuscation (WV8StW push/shift routine over a large constant table), is not declared in package.json `files` (which lists only `lib`), and is unrelated to the small advertised apollo-link timeout logic in lib/timeoutLink.js. The tarball is published under the `@ornikar` scope but declares author Dustin Callaway <[email protected]> and repository github.com/drcallaway/apollo-link-timeout — the original unscoped upstream — indicating a trojanized republish of a legitimate small library with an added preinstall dropper. The alternate-runtime delivery (fetch Bun, then use Bun to execute a bundled obfuscated blob) is a known evasion pattern that hides the executed code from Node-based scanners. Source: ghsa-malware (a315027f00f25b75b2529b3ac88da5fb76cbbcc4a4c9182d4a8f523e26c6122f) Any computer that has this package installed or running should be considered fully compromised. All secrets and keys stored on that computer should be rotated immediately from a different computer. The package should be removed, but as full control of the computer may have been given to an outside entity, there is no guarantee that removing the package will remove all malicious software resulting from installing it.

Affected packages

Package

Name: @ornikar/apollo-link-timeout

Purl: pkg:npm/%40ornikar/apollo-link-timeout

Affected ranges

Type: N/A

Events:

Introduced- None

Fixed -None

Affected versions

1.4.2

1.4.3

1.4.4

1.4.5

1.4.6

1.4.7

1.4.8

1.4.9

1.4.10

1.4.11