Backdoored Module Removed from npm Registry

A malicious package masquerading as a cookie parsing library but delivering a backdoor instead was unpublished from the npm Registry along with three other packages.

npm is a highly popular package manager for JavaScript, allowing users to discover packages of reusable code and assemble them in new ways. Claiming to be the world’s largest software registry, npm helps users install, share, and distribute code, as well as manage dependencies in their projects and receive feedback from others.

The npm Registry represents a public collection of packages of open-source code for Node.js, front-end web apps, mobile apps, robots, routers, and more.

The malicious module that made its way to the npm Registry was named getcookies. On May 2, npm was informed on the package containing a potential backdoor, on the express-cookies and http-fetch-cookies modules depending upon the malicious package, and on the popular mailparser package depending upon http-fetch-cookies.

After receiving the report, npm’s security team started investigating the module to determine whether it indeed contained malicious code and how it might impact the community.

The team discovered that the backdoor was indeed there. It “worked by parsing the user-supplied HTTP request.headers, looking for specifically formatted data that provides three different commands to the backdoor,” npm says.

Control code flaws in the package allowed for an attacker to input arbitrary code into a running server and execute it.

The investigation also revealed that the profile image of the user who published getcookies was a stock photo and that the GitHub account linked from the packages was created in March.

Furthermore, download counts for getcookies, express-cookies, and http-fetch-cookies spiked a few weeks back, supposedly after a version of mailparser that depended upon http-fetch-cookie was published. Although deprecated, mailparser receives around 64,000 weekly downloads.

“We determined the published versions of mailparser that depended on http-fetch-cookies did not use the module in any way, eliminating any risk the backdoor posed. We speculate that mailparser’s requiring http-fetch-cookies was to execute an attack in the future or to inflate download counts of express-cookies to add to its legitimacy,” npm notes.

Less than two hours after receiving the initial report, the security team unpublished the getcookies, express-cookies, and http-fetch-cookies packages and also removed the dustin87 user.

Furthermore, they removed three versions of mailparser (2.2.3, 2.2.2, and 2.2.1) that depended on the http-fetch-cookies module and also reset npm tokens for the author of mailparser to prevent further unauthorized publishing.

Because mailparser didn’t use the malicious module in any way, its users weren’t impacted. Those who directly required and used the express-cookies and getcookies packages were affected.

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