Which versions of chai-as-hardened are malicious?

The following npm versions of chai-as-hardened are flagged malicious: 7.0.9. Treat any of these as compromised.

How do I remediate chai-as-hardened if I installed it?

chai-as-hardened is a typosquat — you almost certainly intended a legitimately-named package. Remove chai-as-hardened, install the correct package, and rotate any secrets exposed during the install since post-install scripts may have already run.

I already installed chai-as-hardened — how do I know if it already compromised me?

If chai-as-hardened was installed, its post-install payload may already have run. Removing the package does not undo that — check outbound connections and credential use from the install window onward.

Is chai-as-hardened part of a known attack campaign?

Yes — chai-as-hardened is associated with the IN-MAL-2026-010565 campaign. Packages in the same campaign often share infrastructure and payloads, so check whether any related packages are also in your dependency tree.

How do I find chai-as-hardened across my projects, lockfiles, and CI pipelines?

Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for chai-as-hardened (version 7.0.9).

Malicious package

chai-as-hardenednpm

Advisory published Jul 14, 2026Updated Jul 14, 2026

chai-as-hardened is a confirmed malicious npm package (MAL-2026-10621) that typosquats a legitimate package to trick installs (malicious version 7.0.9). Do not install it — remove it immediately and rotate any exposed credentials.

Malicious code in chai-as-hardened (npm)

MAL-2026-10621

Immediate action

Remove the package, then rotate any secrets the build/runtime could reach.

npm uninstall chai-as-hardened

What this malware does

On require, index.js spawns a detached Node child process running lib/initializeCaller.js. That script base64-decodes a hardcoded URL (tomato-brunhilda-40.tiiny.site/index.json) via atob, fetches the response with axios, and executes the response body through the Function constructor with require injected, granting the remote payload full Node capabilities on the installer's machine. The destination URL and request header are stored as base64 strings in a shadowed local process.env object to hide the target from static review. Package metadata is a cover story: the name resembles chai-as-promised, the description references vulnerability management, and exports mimic pino (module.exports.pino = middleware) with keywords 'logger', 'stream', 'json' to attract developers into installing and requiring it, at which point the remote-execution chain fires.

Malicious versions

1 flagged

7.0.9

Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)

20c6afe564cf46f02258e635c1b08a802cd4f9b949e098710f44544cdbb86dfd

Detection & response playbook

Typosquat

Find it
Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for chai-as-hardened (version 7.0.9).
If you installed it — respond
chai-as-hardened is a typosquat — you almost certainly intended a legitimately-named package. Remove chai-as-hardened, 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-hardened was installed, its post-install payload may already have run. Removing the package does not undo that — check outbound connections and credential use from the install window onward.

Frequently asked questions

No. chai-as-hardened on npm has been identified as a malicious package (version 7.0.9 flagged). It should be removed immediately — do not install or keep it in your dependency tree.

Campaign

IN-MAL-2026-010565

References

npmjs.com

Credits

Amazon Inspector · finder

Detect & block this

O3 blocks chai-as-hardened-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.

Malware detection Runtime egress monitoring

Explore

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