Which versions of chai-val are malicious?

The following npm versions of chai-val are flagged malicious: 1.1.9. Treat any of these as compromised.

How do I remediate chai-val if I installed it?

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

If chai-val 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-val part of a known attack campaign?

Yes — chai-val is associated with the IN-MAL-2026-003806 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-val across my projects, lockfiles, and CI pipelines?

Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for chai-val (version 1.1.9).

Malicious package

chai-valnpm

Advisory published May 21, 2026Updated May 26, 2026

chai-val is a confirmed malicious npm package (MAL-2026-4515) that opens a backdoor for remote access (malicious version 1.1.9). Do not install it — remove it immediately and rotate any exposed credentials.

Malicious code in chai-val (npm)

MAL-2026-4515

Immediate action

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

npm uninstall chai-val

What this malware does

The package masquerades as a pino-logger helper (file structure, exports, and keywords are copied from pino) but its main entry exports a middleware that spawns node lib/caller.js as a detached child process. caller.js performs an HTTP GET to https://jsonkeeper.com/b/XRGF3 and passes the response's .cookie field directly into new Function.constructor('require', s), invoking it with the host's require — granting the fetched script full Node.js capabilities (filesystem, network, child_process, env). The destination URL is additionally stored base64-encoded as DEV_API_KEY: "aHR0cHM6Ly9qc29ua2VlcGVyLmNvbS9iL1hSR0Yz", an obfuscation of the same C2 endpoint. jsonkeeper.com is an anonymous, mutable paste host: today's content can be replaced by the operator at any moment without republishing the npm package. Any developer who installs chai-val and invokes the advertised middleware export triggers arbitrary remote code execution under their Node process.

Malicious versions

1 flagged

1.1.9

Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)

515e313c5420dfe9edcb88d61079fa80dbf3539da465572fde5ece42ba6ed748

Detection & response playbook

Backdoor / remote access

Find it
Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for chai-val (version 1.1.9).
If you installed it — respond
chai-val 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-val 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-val on npm has been identified as a malicious package (version 1.1.9 flagged). It should be removed immediately — do not install or keep it in your dependency tree.

Campaign

IN-MAL-2026-003806

References

npmjs.com

Credits

Amazon Inspector · finder

Detect & block this

O3 blocks chai-val-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

All malware advisories How O3 detects malware Vulnerability database