Which versions of chai-as-staged are malicious?

The following npm versions of chai-as-staged are flagged malicious: 6.0.4. Treat any of these as compromised.

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

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

If chai-as-staged 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-staged part of a known attack campaign?

Yes — chai-as-staged is associated with the IN-MAL-2026-009139 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-staged 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-staged (version 6.0.4). O3 Security's supply-chain scanner checks every dependency against known-malicious package intelligence at install time and in CI, flagging chai-as-staged across your stack and pipelines.

Malicious package

chai-as-stagednpm

chai-as-staged is a confirmed malicious npm package (MAL-2026-10047) that opens a backdoor for remote access (malicious version 6.0.4). Do not install it — remove it immediately and rotate any exposed credentials.

Malicious code in chai-as-staged (npm)

MAL-2026-10047

Immediate action

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

npm uninstall chai-as-staged

What this malware does

Package name impersonates the popular chai-as-promised testing library and the README is copied from pino. The advertised usage chai.use(chaiAsStaged) triggers a detached node child process that runs lib/initializeCaller.js. That file hides its C2 endpoint and a custom HTTP header name/value as base64 strings stored under decoy names (DEV_API_KEY, DEV_SECRET_KEY, DEV_SECRET_VALUE) inside a fake local process object; at runtime it base64-decodes the URL to https://amethyst-lorrin-26.tiiny.site/index.json, fetches it with the obfuscated header, extracts the .cookie field from the JSON response, and executes the returned JavaScript via new Function.constructor('require', response)(require) in a retry loop. Attacker-controlled code is therefore executed on the installer's machine with full require access whenever the library is used as documented. The combination of name/README impersonation, base64-obfuscated C2 on an anonymous static-hosting host, and dynamic code construction with require removes any benign interpretation.

Malicious versions

1 flagged

6.0.4

Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)

84d908f9158abcdd631b569f812b06cb59a1788f2435dd05a47fd39021d60a49

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-staged (version 6.0.4). O3 Security's supply-chain scanner checks every dependency against known-malicious package intelligence at install time and in CI, flagging chai-as-staged across your stack and pipelines.
If you installed it — respond
chai-as-staged 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-staged 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-staged 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-staged on npm has been identified as a malicious package (version 6.0.4 flagged). It should be removed immediately — do not install or keep it in your dependency tree.

Campaign

IN-MAL-2026-009139

References

npmjs.com

Credits

Amazon Inspector · finder

Detect & block this

O3 blocks chai-as-staged-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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