chaienvnpm
chaienv is a confirmed malicious npm package (MAL-2026-17321) that typosquats a legitimate package to trick installs (malicious version 1.0.2). Do not install it — remove it immediately and rotate any exposed credentials.
Malicious code in chaienv (npm)
What this malware does
[email protected] is published as a small Chai environment helper, but its index.js unconditionally loads lib/config.js at require() time via const { config } = require('./lib/config'). lib/config.js is a 4,454,290-byte single-line module packed with obfuscator.io (RC4-decoded string array of roughly 26,000 entries), with no relation to the trivial no-op middleware the README advertises. The rest of lib/ ships verbatim pino internals (proto.js, multistream.js, levels.js, transport.js, worker.js, redaction.js, symbols.js) as decoys, the README CI badge and LICENSE point at github.com/pinojs/pino, and package.json bugs.url is jsonspack.com — none of which match the stated Chai-plugin purpose. Any consumer that imports this package executes the opaque 4.4MB blob on load; the package impersonates an unrelated well-known project's source tree to normalize the obfuscated sibling and bypass casual review.
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 chaienv (version 1.0.2). O3 Security's supply-chain scanner checks every dependency against known-malicious package intelligence at install time and in CI, flagging chaienv across your stack and pipelines.
If you installed it — respond
chaienv is a typosquat — you almost certainly intended a legitimately-named package. Remove chaienv, 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 chaienv 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 chaienv 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 chaienv-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.