Which versions of chaienv are malicious?

The following npm versions of chaienv are flagged malicious: 1.0.2. Treat any of these as compromised.

How do I remediate chaienv if I installed it?

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.

I already installed chaienv — how do I know if it already compromised me?

If chaienv 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 chaienv part of a known attack campaign?

Yes — chaienv is associated with the IN-MAL-2026-020801 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 chaienv across my projects, lockfiles, and CI pipelines?

Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for chaienv (version 1.0.2).

Malicious package

chaienvnpm

Advisory published Sep 30, 2026Updated Sep 30, 2026

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)

MAL-2026-17321

Immediate action

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

npm uninstall chaienv

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

1 flagged

1.0.2

Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)

cbb73465123d4e732dae815badc8950b40e9447463c1fca697551ab3aa00e020

Detection & response playbook

Typosquat

Find it
Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for chaienv (version 1.0.2).
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 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. chaienv on npm has been identified as a malicious package (version 1.0.2 flagged). It should be removed immediately — do not install or keep it in your dependency tree.

Campaign

IN-MAL-2026-020801

References

npmjs.com

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.

Malware detection Runtime egress monitoring

Explore

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