The Bitwarden security team identified and contained a malicious package that was briefly distributed through the npm delivery path for @bitwarden/cli@2026.4.0 between 5:57 PM and 7:30 PM (ET) on April 22, 2026, in connection with a broader Checkmarx supply chain incident. The investigation found no evidence that end user vault data was accessed or at risk, or that production data or production systems were compromised. Once the issue was detected, compromised access was revoked, the malicious ...
I think npm allows installation scripts which do make this worse, as a package can run arbitrary command at install time.
Npm has gotten a few config options that prevent this behaviour. We can only hope that they will become the default eventually.