Summary

On 2026-05-11, between approximately 19:20 and 19:26 UTC, 84 malicious versions across 42 @tanstack/ packages were published to the npm registry. The publishes were authenticated via the legitimate GitHub Actions OIDC trusted-publisher binding for TanStack/router, but the publish workflow itself was not modified. The attacker chained three known vulnerability classes — a pullrequesttarget "Pwn Request" misconfiguration, GitHub Actions cache poisoning across the fork↔base trust boundary, and runtime memory extraction of the OIDC token from the Actions runner process — to publish credential-stealing malware under a trusted identity.

Each affected package received exactly two malicious versions, published a few minutes apart.

Impact

A user installing any affected version executes a payload (~2.3 MB obfuscated routerinit.js) at install time that:

- Harvests credentials from common locations: - AWS instance metadata (IMDS) and Secrets Manager - GCP metadata service - Kubernetes service-account tokens - HashiCorp Vault tokens - ~/.npmrc (npm tokens) - GitHub tokens (env vars, gh CLI config, .git-credentials) - SSH private keys (~/.ssh/) - Exfiltrates harvested data over the Session/Oxen messenger file-upload network (filev2.getsession.org, seed{1,2,3}.getsession.org). This is end-to-end encrypted with no attacker-controlled C2, so blocking by IP or domain is the only network mitigation. - Enumerates packages that the victim maintains via registry.npmjs.org/-/v1/search?text=maintainer:<user> and republishes them with the same injection, propagating the compromise across npm.

Any developer or CI environment that ran npm install, pnpm install, or yarn install against an affected version on 2026-05-11 should be considered compromised. All credentials accessible to the install process should be rotated immediately. Cloud audit logs should be reviewed for activity originating from the affected hosts during and after the install window.

Detection

Inspect the published manifest of any pinned @tanstack/ version. Malicious manifests contain this exact optionalDependencies entry:

json "optionalDependencies": { "@tanstack/setup": "github:tanstack/router#79ac49eedf774dd4b0cfa308722bc463cfe5885c" }

To check a version without running install scripts:

bash npm pack @tanstack/<name>@<version> # downloads tarball; does NOT execute lifecycle scripts tar -xzf .tgz grep -A3 optionalDependencies package/package.json ls -la package/routerinit.js # malicious payload, ~2.3 MB, present at package root

The payload file routerinit.js is approximately 2.3 MB of obfuscated JavaScript. It is placed at the tarball root and is intentionally not declared in the package's "files" array, so it does not appear in the package's documented contents.

Mechanism

@tanstack/setup is not a real package on the npm registry. The github:tanstack/router#79ac49ee... specifier resolves to an orphan commit pushed to a fork in the tanstack/router GitHub fork network. GitHub serves commits across the entire fork network for git-URL dependencies, so the attacker did not require write access to TanStack/router itself — only the ability to fork and push to their own fork.

When npm processes the optional dependency, it:

1. Fetches the orphan commit from the fork network. 2. Installs the commit's declared dependencies (which include a real bun binary). 3. Runs the commit's prepare lifecycle script: bun run tanstackrunner.js && exit 1. The trailing exit 1 causes the optional install to fail, after which npm silently discards it — leaving no nodemodules trace. 4. The tanstackrunner.js script in turn executes routerinit.js from the host package's tarball.

Patches

Affected versions are being deprecated on npm with a SECURITY: notice. Where npm policy allows (no existing third-party dependents), affected versions are also being unpublished. The npm security team has been engaged to pull tarballs server-side for versions that cannot be unpublished.

Clean follow-up releases are being prepared. Update to the patched version listed in the affected-products table for each package, then reinstall from a clean lockfile.

Workarounds

Until clean follow-up releases are available:

- Pin every @tanstack/ dependency to a known-good version published before 2026-05-11 19:00 UTC. The last known-good version for most affected packages was published on 2026-03-15. - Delete nodemodules and the lockfile, then reinstall to ensure no transitive dependency resolves to a malicious version. - Configure npm to skip lifecycle scripts on install (npm config set ignore-scripts true) as a temporary defense-in-depth measure. - For CI, audit any pipeline that ran install against @tanstack/ between 19:20 and 19:30 UTC on 2026-05-11. Treat the runner as compromised and rotate any secrets it had access to.

Indicators of compromise

| Indicator | Value | |---|---| | Malicious git ref | github:tanstack/router#79ac49eedf774dd4b0cfa308722bc463cfe5885c | | Fictitious package name | @tanstack/setup | | Payload filename | routerinit.js (~2.3 MB, package root, undeclared in files) | | Helper filename in orphan commit | tanstackrunner.js | | Exfiltration network | filev2.getsession.org, seed1.getsession.org, seed2.getsession.org, seed3.getsession.org | | Second-stage payload URLs | https://litter.catbox.moe/h8nc9u.js, https://litter.catbox.moe/7rrc6l.mjs | | Poisoned cache key | Linux-pnpm-store-6f9233a50def742c09fde54f56553d6b449a535adf87d4083690539f49ae4da11 | | Publish window (UTC) | 2026-05-11 19:20 — 19:26 | | Publish mechanism | GitHub Actions OIDC trusted publisher (oidc:db7d6f54-05d5-412b-8a10-e7a8398b303e) | | Workflow runs | https://github.com/TanStack/router/actions/runs/25613093674 (attempt 4), https://github.com/TanStack/router/actions/runs/25691781302 | | Attacker GitHub accounts | zblgg (id 127806521), voicproducoes (id 269549300) | | Attacker fork (renamed to evade detection) | https://github.com/zblgg/configuration |

Credits

- The security researcher who initially disclosed the vulnerability publicly with detailed analysis at https://github.com/TanStack/router/issues/7383

References

- Public incident tracking issue: https://github.com/TanStack/router/issues/7383 - Related research: - Adnan Khan, "The Monsters in Your Build Cache: GitHub Actions Cache Poisoning" (May 2024) - GitHub Security Lab, "Keeping your GitHub Actions and workflows secure: Preventing Pwn Requests" - StepSecurity, "tj-actions/changed-files action is compromised" (March 2025) — the malicious payload reuses this incident's runner-memory extraction technique verbatim

An issue was discovered in UiPath App Studio 21.4.4. There is a persistent XSS vulnerability in the file-upload functionality for uploading icons when attempting to create new Apps. An attacker with minimal privileges in the application can build their own App and upload a malicious file containing an XSS payload, by uploading an arbitrary file and modifying the MIME type in a subsequent HTTP request. This then allows the file to be stored and retrieved from the server by other users in the same organization.

UiPath Assistant 21.4.4 will load and execute attacker controlled data from the file path supplied to the --dev-widget argument of the URI handler for uipath-assistant://. This allows an attacker to execute code on a victim's machine or capture NTLM credentials by supplying a networked or WebDAV file path.

An issue was discovered in UiPath Assistant 21.4.4. User-controlled data supplied to the --process-start argument of the URI handler for uipath-assistant:// is not correctly encoded, resulting in attacker-controlled content being injected into the error message displayed (when the injected content does not match an existing process). A determined attacker could leverage this to execute JavaScript in the context of the Electron application.

UiPath Orchestrator before 2018.3.4 allows CSV Injection, related to the Audit export, Robot log export, and Transaction log export features.

UiPath Orchestrator through 2018.2.4 allows any authenticated user to change the information of arbitrary users (even administrators) leading to privilege escalation and remote code execution.