chai-as-cracknpm
chai-as-crack is a confirmed malicious npm package (MAL-2026-16196) that typosquats a legitimate package to trick installs (malicious version 7.0.5). Do not install it — remove it immediately and rotate any exposed credentials.
Malicious code in chai-as-crack (npm)
What this malware does
Package's main entry (index.js) unconditionally requires./lib/config at top level, causing the file to execute on any require('chai-as-crack'). lib/config.js is approximately 4 MB of obfuscator.io-transformed code: a rotating string array of ~23,868 entries with hex-escaped identifiers, multiple decoder wrappers (T, j), and control-flow flattening. The exported middleware is a no-op decoy. Package metadata further disguises the module as the popular pino logger: package.json declares name chai-as-crack with keywords logger/stream/json, while README.md, docs/, index.d.ts, and LICENSE are copied verbatim from pino (linking to github.com/pinojs/pino). Author metadata (Robert King [email protected], bugs URL https://jsonspack.com/issues) is unrelated to pino. The combination of import-time execution of an opaque multi-megabyte payload, heavy obfuscation with no source map or build artifacts, and a cover-story impersonating an unrelated well-known logger matches the loader/dropper shape and gives the publisher arbitrary code execution inside any consumer that imports the package.
Malicious versions
Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)
Detection & response playbook
TyposquatFind it
Scan your lockfiles (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, yarn.lock, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, etc.) and build artifacts for chai-as-crack (version 7.0.5). O3 Security's supply-chain scanner checks every dependency against known-malicious package intelligence at install time and in CI, flagging chai-as-crack across your stack and pipelines.
If you installed it — respond
chai-as-crack is a typosquat — you almost certainly intended a legitimately-named package. Remove chai-as-crack, install the correct package, and rotate any secrets exposed during the install since post-install scripts may have already run.
Did it already run?
If chai-as-crack was ever installed, its post-install/runtime payload may have already executed. O3's L7 egress monitoring and runtime eBPF sensors detect the credential exfiltration or command-and-control callback after install and block the malicious outbound channel, so you catch and contain the actual compromise — not just the presence of the package.
How O3 protects you
O3 blocks chai-as-crack before install through its supply-chain scanner, and if it has already run, detects and severs the exfiltration or C2 callback at runtime through L7 egress monitoring and eBPF.
Frequently asked questions
Campaign
References
Credits
- Amazon Inspector · finder
Detect & block this
O3 blocks chai-as-crack-class packages before install and in CI — and if it already ran, its runtime egress monitoring catches the malicious outbound activity and severs the channel.