Crypto Users Warned to Stop Transacting as Massive Exploit Threatens Apps and Wallets

Swathes of crypto users could be at risk of having their funds stolen following the discovery of compromised JavaScript code packages, Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet warned Monday.

NPM is a prominent package manager for JavaScript, and Guillemet said on X that the entire programming language’s ecosystem could be vulnerable after a reputable developer’s account was compromised, potentially spreading a malicious payload to various websites.

“The malicious payload works by silently swapping crypto addresses on the fly to steal funds,” he said, adding that compromised packages have been downloaded more than 1 billion times. Guillemet added that funds on “potentially all chains” could be vulnerable to the exploit.

“I would strongly recommend not signing any crypto transactions right now,” software developer Cygaar meanwhile warned, noting that “various crypto websites” could be vulnerable.

Blockchain security firm Blockaid said on X that the compromise impacts around two dozen popular packages, such as “color-name” and “color-string.” NPM hosts packages of reusable code that users can integrate into their projects, which are written by others.

“It changes the destination address of transactions and approvals to be the attacker’s addresses rather than the address you’re actually trying to interact with,” Cygaar explained.

NPM later appeared to disable the compromised packages, Cygaar added. However, he encouraged developers to still check their dependencies, noting that they could’ve downloaded a compromised package before the change was made.

The sentiment was echoed by the author of a post that Guillemet linked to on X, which stated that they are “actively working with the NPM security team to resolve the issue” and that the malicious code had been removed from most of the affected webpages.

The author said that the NPM account impacted was called “qix,” and the malicious patch impacted “some of the most fundamental utilities in JavaScript” that are used as building blocks for countless projects.

Editor’s note: This story is breaking and will be updated with additional context.