the WORST hack of 2026

About this video

The creator reports on what he presents as a major supply chain attack on Axios, the popular JavaScript HTTP library, which he says gets over 100 million downloads a week and is depended on by 174,000 projects. According to his account, an attacker obtained the lead maintainer’s long-lived npm classic access token, changed the account email, and — instead of adding malicious code to Axios itself — added a single dependency, plain-crypto-js, to package.json. That dependency was never imported by any of Axios’s 86 source files; it existed only so its post-install script would run on npm install. He says a clean version was staged 18 hours beforehand to look legitimate, the attacker published via the npm CLI to bypass CI/CD guardrails, and two release branches — versions 1.14.1 and 0.30.4 — were poisoned within 39 minutes of each other, so projects using caret version ranges would pull them automatically. When installed, the post-install dropper (setup.js) uses two layers of obfuscation (XOR and base64) to hide its payload, detects the operating system, contacts a command-and-control server, and downloads a platform-specific remote access Trojan — which he says happens 1.1 seconds after npm install — then deletes itself and the malicious package.json and restores a clean one, leaving little trace. He explains the dependency-trust problem: installing one app means trusting its dependencies, and he says the average npm project trusts 200 to 2,100 strangers with code execution. He walks viewers through checking whether they are affected — npm list -g axios and deeper system searches for the bad versions, plus checks for the RAT and for contact with the C2 IP (which he says was taken down) — and advises anyone who finds indicators to treat the machine as compromised, not just delete files, and to rotate every API key, credential, and token, pointing to a remediation checklist. He credits Socket.dev with first finding the attack and recommends John Hammond’s livestream analysis. He explains supply chain attacks with a coffee analogy: poisoning one cup versus poisoning the beans or the shared water supply.

Key takeaways

• Attacker allegedly used the Axios maintainer’s npm token and added one malicious dependency, plain-crypto-js
• Creator names poisoned versions 1.14.1 and 0.30.4, published within 39 minutes of each other
• The post-install script allegedly installs a RAT in 1.1 seconds, then erases itself and restores a clean package.json
• Check with npm list -g axios and system-wide searches; look for RAT and C2 indicators
• If affected, treat the machine as compromised and rotate all keys, credentials, and tokens

Episode details: published March 31, 2026 · 11:00 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are NetworkChuck’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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