cutekitten05 npm typosquat campaign: axelarjs-sdk, wallet-adapter-base, cutekitten-test, bigbob22-test exfiltrate host info via Discord webhook
Severity: critical · Patch status: no-fix-needed · Since 2026-11-02
On 2026-11-01 the npm account cutekitten05 published five malicious packages — axelarjs-sdk@1.0.1 (typosquatting the unscoped name of @axelar-network/axelarjs-sdk), wallet-adapter-base@1.0.0 (typosquatting @solana/wallet-adapter-base), cutekitten-test@1.0.1, bigbob22-test@1.0.0 and sol-wallet-adapter — all containing no functional code. Each runs a preinstall script (node preinstall.js) that POSTs the machine's hostname, OS username and local time to a Discord webhook as 'PC Notifier'. GitHub advisories GHSA-69w5-x7cm-v78h, GHSA-r89f-jjgp-3q97, GHSA-pw4j-9v86-8c3g and GHSA-j2hf-rv9p-8jvr were published 2026-11-02 with critical severity and no patched versions. Anyone installing these packages executes the exfiltration script; remove them and audit affected machines.
What to do
- Search lockfiles and npm install history for axelarjs-sdk, wallet-adapter-base, cutekitten-test, bigbob22-test and sol-wallet-adapter and remove any instances
- If installed, treat the machine as compromised: identify the hostname/username exposed, rotate credentials used on it and review for further compromise
- Pin to scoped packages (@axelar-network/axelarjs-sdk, @solana/wallet-adapter-base) and verify package provenance before installing similarly named packages
- Block the Discord webhook domain/URL in egress filtering and monitor for callbacks
- Enable npm audit/GitHub Dependabot alerts and consider install-script disabling (npm config set ignore-scripts true)
Sources
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