Amazon Inspector security researchers have identified and reported over 150,000 packages linked to a coordinated tea.xyz token farming campaign in the npm registry. This is one of the largest package flooding incidents in open source registry history, and represents a defining moment in supply chain security, far surpassing the initial 15,000 packages reported by Sonatype researchers in April 2024. Through a combination of advanced rule-based detection and AI, the research team uncovered a self-replicating attack pattern where threat actors automatically generate and publish packages to earn cryptocurrency rewards without user awareness, revealing how the campaign has expanded exponentially since its initial identification.
This incident demonstrates both the evolving nature of threats where financial incentives drive registry pollution at unprecedented scale, and the critical importance of industry-community collaboration in defending the software supply…
