Which versions of hardhat-deep are malicious?

The following npm versions of hardhat-deep are flagged malicious: 2.0.1. Treat any of these as compromised.

How do I remediate hardhat-deep if I installed it?

Remove hardhat-deep from your project and lockfile, then assume any secrets accessible to the build or runtime were exposed: rotate API keys, tokens, and credentials, and audit for unexpected outbound activity or persistence.

I already installed hardhat-deep — how do I know if it already compromised me?

If hardhat-deep 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 hardhat-deep part of a known attack campaign?

Yes — hardhat-deep is associated with the IN-MAL-2026-021132 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 hardhat-deep across my projects, lockfiles, and CI pipelines?

Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for hardhat-deep (version 2.0.1).

Malicious package

hardhat-deepnpm

Advisory published Oct 8, 2026Updated Oct 8, 2026

hardhat-deep is a confirmed malicious npm package (MAL-2026-17659) that executes malicious code on install (malicious version 2.0.1). Do not install it — remove it immediately and rotate any exposed credentials.

Malicious code in hardhat-deep (npm)

MAL-2026-17659

Immediate action

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

npm uninstall hardhat-deep

What this malware does

The npm package [email protected] is a trojanised shell. Its tarball copies the pino logger source tree (README, SECURITY.md, index.d.ts, lib/proto.js, lib/transport.js, lib/worker.js, lib/levels.js, lib/multistream.js, etc.) verbatim, while the package name and manifest description target the Hardhat ecosystem. The only novel file is lib/config.js, a single-line 4,499,968-byte obfuscator.io bundle with a 26,234-entry rotated string array, two decoder functions, hex-encoded strings and control-flow flattening. The package's top-level index.js is modified from pino's original to unconditionally require('./lib/config'), so any consumer that requires or imports hardhat-deep executes this opaque payload inside the installer's Node process. The exported middleware is a no-op cover with no logger functionality, so running the obfuscated blob is the only effect of installing or loading the package. The author identity (Robert King [email protected], jsonspack.com) is unrelated to either Hardhat or pinojs.

Malicious versions

1 flagged

2.0.1

Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)

fde0a4a0ec197ee1aab9acf20ea157268b553fdb5669c545c27d92cbf89fe304

Detection & response playbook

Malicious package

Find it
Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for hardhat-deep (version 2.0.1).
If you installed it — respond
Remove hardhat-deep from your project and lockfile, then assume any secrets accessible to the build or runtime were exposed: rotate API keys, tokens, and credentials, and audit for unexpected outbound activity or persistence.
Did it already run?
If hardhat-deep 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. hardhat-deep on npm has been identified as a malicious package (version 2.0.1 flagged). It should be removed immediately — do not install or keep it in your dependency tree.

Campaign

IN-MAL-2026-021132

References

npmjs.com

Credits

Amazon Inspector · finder

Detect & block this

O3 blocks hardhat-deep-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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