Which versions of chai-as-inspired are malicious?

The following npm versions of chai-as-inspired are flagged malicious: 2.2.4. Treat any of these as compromised.

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

chai-as-inspired establishes remote access, so treat any host that installed it as fully compromised. Isolate the machine, remove the package, rotate all credentials it could reach, and rebuild from a trusted image rather than cleaning in place — a backdoor may have planted additional persistence.

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

If chai-as-inspired 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.

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

Yes — chai-as-inspired is associated with the IN-MAL-2026-014977, RLMA-2026-06117 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-inspired across my projects, lockfiles, and CI pipelines?

Scan your lockfiles (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, yarn.lock, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, etc.) and build artifacts for chai-as-inspired (version 2.2.4). O3 Security's supply-chain scanner checks every dependency against known-malicious package intelligence at install time and in CI, flagging chai-as-inspired across your stack and pipelines.

Malicious package

chai-as-inspirednpm

chai-as-inspired is a confirmed malicious npm package (MAL-2026-12540) that opens a backdoor for remote access (malicious version 2.2.4). Do not install it — remove it immediately and rotate any exposed credentials.

Malicious code in chai-as-inspired (npm)

MAL-2026-12540

Immediate action

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

npm uninstall chai-as-inspired

What this malware does

chai-as-inspired is a typosquat resembling chai/pino packages. Its middleware entrypoint (index.js) spawns a detached node lib/caller.js child on invocation. caller.js hides its network destination behind a fake process.env object whose values are base64 blobs; decoding yields the URL https://api.jsonstorage.net/v1/json/2ef8c758-a96f-459e-b036-b3b90379a165/f89e8264-86c2-4684-94da-c3f82d59370f and an x-secret-key header. The response's cookie field is passed to new Function.constructor('require', s)(require), executing attacker-controlled JavaScript in a retry loop with the installer's require and full Node privileges. The remote content is hosted on a mutable, anonymous JSON-storage bucket and can be changed at any time by the operator. The base64 disguise of the endpoint and header keys, combined with the fetch-and-eval mechanism, establishes hostile intent.

Malicious versions

1 flagged

2.2.4

Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)

bc4795830ed2849aaf2a6eaa488fbecc42a31c2d6d212fe34e635c16217e46ed

704d1638e1c13d80e480c6d20b2ff29e94b67e9a1305a87b749e721db0dab74a

Detection & response playbook

Backdoor / remote access

Find it
Scan your lockfiles (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, yarn.lock, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, etc.) and build artifacts for chai-as-inspired (version 2.2.4). O3 Security's supply-chain scanner checks every dependency against known-malicious package intelligence at install time and in CI, flagging chai-as-inspired across your stack and pipelines.
If you installed it — respond
chai-as-inspired establishes remote access, so treat any host that installed it as fully compromised. Isolate the machine, remove the package, rotate all credentials it could reach, and rebuild from a trusted image rather than cleaning in place — a backdoor may have planted additional persistence.
Did it already run?
If chai-as-inspired 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-inspired 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

No. chai-as-inspired on npm has been identified as a malicious package (version 2.2.4 flagged). It should be removed immediately — do not install or keep it in your dependency tree.

Campaign

IN-MAL-2026-014977RLMA-2026-06117

References

npmjs.com

Credits

Amazon Inspector · finder
ReversingLabs · finder

Detect & block this

O3 blocks chai-as-inspired-class packages before install and in CI — and if it already ran, its runtime egress monitoring catches the C2 callback and severs the channel.

Malware detection Runtime egress monitoring

Explore

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