mal-2026-16196
Vulnerability from ossf_malicious_packages
-= Per source details. Do not edit below this line.=-
Source: amazon-inspector (090c71f12df6d5441dce686e54fef42805f1afd6575d48bc0f6263dcf50b2f21)
Package's main entry (index.js) unconditionally requires./lib/config at top level, causing the file to execute on any require('chai-as-crack'). lib/config.js is approximately 4 MB of obfuscator.io-transformed code: a rotating string array of ~23,868 entries with hex-escaped identifiers, multiple decoder wrappers (T, j), and control-flow flattening. The exported middleware is a no-op decoy. Package metadata further disguises the module as the popular pino logger: package.json declares name chai-as-crack with keywords logger/stream/json, while README.md, docs/, index.d.ts, and LICENSE are copied verbatim from pino (linking to github.com/pinojs/pino). Author metadata (Robert King hello@jsonspack.com, bugs URL https://jsonspack.com/issues) is unrelated to pino. The combination of import-time execution of an opaque multi-megabyte payload, heavy obfuscation with no source map or build artifacts, and a cover-story impersonating an unrelated well-known logger matches the loader/dropper shape and gives the publisher arbitrary code execution inside any consumer that imports the package.
- CWE-506 - The product contains code that appears to be malicious in nature.
{
"affected": [
{
"database_specific": {
"cwes": [
{
"cweId": "CWE-506",
"description": "The product contains code that appears to be malicious in nature.",
"name": "Embedded Malicious Code"
}
],
"indicators": {
"evidence_files": [
{
"path": "lib/config.js",
"sha256": "df4970a67c9caae5dd2e4603ea726f7624a4c17bb197a1039985a10ff9b56923",
"tlsh": "f016818d5685d42381cc2793be057ae9b17ae96684cca447ff74bf1c69bc41bc2a0ed0"
},
{
"path": "package.json",
"sha256": "d1b1c09d633d667e3a50a0aab253dddf27cdba087e19c76594d3830e9a957db1",
"tlsh": "1c017b20dab85e6304ed25524c2a06437a654c575528fd1932eb612c4f9d5fb01bf21d"
}
],
"package_integrity": [
{
"filename": "chai-as-crack-7.0.5.tgz",
"hashes": {
"sha1": "629a2d74299d234004a72f0db419b2e89db7592e",
"sha512_sri": "sha512-BFdyXLVWMCEwYo3VBTASRmMSPVXUfYAu8vNttxYXYdkgIMCcfVO9hIwKZ2HAy5uk321ziowPagni55IgzvMOMg=="
}
}
]
}
},
"package": {
"ecosystem": "npm",
"name": "chai-as-crack"
},
"versions": [
"7.0.5"
]
}
],
"credits": [
{
"contact": [
"inspector-research@amazon.com"
],
"name": "Amazon Inspector",
"type": "FINDER"
}
],
"database_specific": {
"malicious-packages-origins": [
{
"id": "IN-MAL-2026-020071",
"import_time": "2026-09-15T16:41:58.23645445Z",
"modified_time": "2026-09-15T16:32:24Z",
"sha256": "090c71f12df6d5441dce686e54fef42805f1afd6575d48bc0f6263dcf50b2f21",
"source": "amazon-inspector",
"versions": [
"7.0.5"
]
}
]
},
"details": "\n---\n_-= Per source details. Do not edit below this line.=-_\n\n## Source: amazon-inspector (090c71f12df6d5441dce686e54fef42805f1afd6575d48bc0f6263dcf50b2f21)\nPackage\u0027s main entry (index.js) unconditionally requires./lib/config at top level, causing the file to execute on any require(\u0027chai-as-crack\u0027). lib/config.js is approximately 4 MB of obfuscator.io-transformed code: a rotating string array of ~23,868 entries with hex-escaped identifiers, multiple decoder wrappers (T, j), and control-flow flattening. The exported middleware is a no-op decoy. Package metadata further disguises the module as the popular pino logger: package.json declares name chai-as-crack with keywords logger/stream/json, while README.md, docs/, index.d.ts, and LICENSE are copied verbatim from pino (linking to github.com/pinojs/pino). Author metadata (Robert King \u003chello@jsonspack.com\u003e, bugs URL https://jsonspack.com/issues) is unrelated to pino. The combination of import-time execution of an opaque multi-megabyte payload, heavy obfuscation with no source map or build artifacts, and a cover-story impersonating an unrelated well-known logger matches the loader/dropper shape and gives the publisher arbitrary code execution inside any consumer that imports the package.\n",
"id": "MAL-2026-16196",
"modified": "2026-09-15T16:32:24Z",
"published": "2026-09-15T16:32:24Z",
"references": [
{
"type": "PACKAGE",
"url": "https://www.npmjs.com/package/chai-as-crack/v/7.0.5"
}
],
"schema_version": "1.7.4",
"summary": "Malicious code in chai-as-crack (npm)"
}
Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
Related by attack behaviour
Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.