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Security Audit Report

1. Intro

In September 2025, two notable supply chain attacks were reported on NPM:

  • Debug/Chalk Attack: Malicious versions of the widely used debug and chalk packages were published, containing obfuscated code that exfiltrated data.
  • TinyColor Attack: A compromised maintainer account led to a malicious release of tinycolor, which then spread across ~40 dependent packages.

This report reviews these incidents, lists affected packages, checks our project dependencies (both web-app/client and API/server), and recommends preventive measures.

2. Root Cause Analysis

Debug/Chalk Attack

  • Cause: Compromise of package maintainer credentials.
  • Point of Failure: Unauthorized publication of new versions containing malware.
  • Execution: Malicious scripts were added that collected and transmitted sensitive system information.

TinyColor Attack

  • Cause: A compromised maintainer account.
  • Point of Failure: The attacker injected malicious code into tinycolor and released it under valid version numbers.
  • Execution: Downstream packages importing tinycolor unknowingly propagated the malware.

3. List of Compromised Packages

Debug/Chalk Attack

  • chalk: versions 5.3.0 and 4.1.2 (malicious backdoors reported).
  • debug: versions 4.3.4 and 3.2.7.

TinyColor Attack

  • tinycolor2 (core package).
  • Affected downstream packages included:
  • @ctrl/tinycolor
  • color
  • react-color
  • Several other UI/color-related libraries (~40 packages total).

4. Audit of Our Project Dependencies

Client (Web-App)

  • Dependencies include react, three, axios, framer-motion, vite, supabase, etc.
  • No direct usage of chalk, debug, or tinycolor.
  • No indirect usage detected in the provided package-lock.json.
  • Status: Not compromised.

Server (API)

  • Dependencies include express, yargs, supabase-js, cors, etc.
  • No direct usage of chalk, debug, or tinycolor.
  • No indirect usage detected in the lockfile.
  • Status: Not compromised.

5. Verification Process

  • Automated scanning was performed using the uploaded package.json and package-lock.json.
  • Both files were recursively searched for references to compromised packages/versions.
  • No matches were found for chalk, debug, or tinycolor.

6. Measures to prevent infection from upstream packages (supply chain protection)

Preventing Upstream Supply Chain Attacks

  1. Dependency Pinning: Always pin versions (avoid ^ or ~ semver ranges).
  2. Use Trusted Registries: Employ npm/yarn with strict registry sources.
  3. Automated Audits: Integrate tools like npm audit, socket.dev, or snyk into CI pipelines.
  4. Lockfile Integrity: Commit package-lock.json and enforce lockfile integrity checks.
  5. Monitor Package Maintainers: Track security advisories for critical dependencies.

Measures to prevent reinfection from the same source (malware protection)

  1. Code Review: Carefully audit all PRs and dependency updates.
  2. Principle of Least Privilege: Restrict permissions for build and deployment systems.
  3. Static Analysis & Sandboxing: Run suspicious dependencies in isolated environments before production.
  4. Incident Response: Maintain a playbook for quickly rolling back malicious updates.
  5. Custom Scanners: As suggested, maintain a script to recursively check for malicious packages in lockfiles.

7. Conclusion

Our current project is not impacted by the recent debug, chalk, or tinycolor supply chain attacks. However, these incidents highlight the importance of strong dependency hygiene, automated auditing, and proactive monitoring. By implementing the measures above, we can significantly reduce the risk of compromise in future supply chain attacks.