GitHub Tightens npm Publishing After Flaw Left 1,500+ Packages Vulnerable to Hijacking
Summary: GitHub now expires unvalidated npm trusted publishing configurations 48 hours after creation, after Bloom Security found that npm anchored trust to a repository's owner/name slug rather than its immutable numeric ID until the first successful publish. Bloom Security reported the flaw, which it codenamed SlugFest, to GitHub on June 6, 2026, and identified over 1,500 vulnerable packages with more than 10 million collective downloads.
What's compelling: The attack needs no insider knowledge, no credential theft, and no race condition - only that a maintainer rename, transfer, or delete a repository whose trusted publisher was never used to publish, letting an attacker claim the freed slug and ship a malicious version under the legitimate package name with its reputation and download counts intact. Bloom Security notes that AI agents resolving dependencies on their own take the latest version and rarely check its origin, so a reclaimed slug gets pulled and run with no human in the loop.
Read the original at The Hacker News ↗
- Topics
- Supply Chain & AppSec
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