North Korea-Nexus Threat Actor Compromises Widely Used Axios NPM Package in Supply Chain Attack

Written by: Austin Larsen, Dima Lenz, Adrian Hernandez, Tyler McLellan, Christopher Gardner, Ashley Zaya, Michael Rudden, Mon Liclican Introduction Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) is tracking an active software supply chain attack targeting the popular Node Package Manager (NPM) package " axios ." Between March 31, 2026, 00:21 and 03:20 UTC, an attacker introduced a malicious dependency named " plain-crypto-js " into axios NPM releases versions 1. 14. 1 and 0. 30. 4.

Axios is the most popular JavaScript library used to simplify HTTP requests, and these packages typically have over 100 million and 83 million weekly downloads, respectively. This malicious dependency is an obfuscated dropper that deploys the WAVESHAPER. V2 backdoor across Windows, macOS, and Linux.