Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a fresh set of malicious packages across npm and the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository linked to a fake recruitment-themed campaign orchestrated by the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group.
The coordinated campaign has been codenamed graphalgo in reference to the first package published in the npm registry. It’s assessed to be active since May 2025.
“Developers are approached via social platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, or through job offerings on forums like Reddit,” ReversingLabs researcher Karlo Zanki said in a report. “The campaign includes a well-orchestrated story around a company involved in blockchain and cryptocurrency exchanges.”
Notably, one of the identified npm packages, bigmathutils, attracted more than 10,000 downloads after the first, non-malicious version was published, and before the second version containing a malicious payload was released. The names of the packages are listed below –
npm –Â
- graphalgo
- graphorithm
- graphstruct
- graphlibcore
- netstruct
- graphnetworkx
- terminalcolor256
- graphkitx
- graphchain
- graphflux
- graphorbit
- graphnet
- graphhub
- terminal-kleur
- graphrix
- bignumx
- bignumberx
- bignumex
- bigmathex
- bigmathlib
- bigmathutils
- graphlink
- bigmathix
- graphflowx
PyPI –
- graphalgo
- graphex
- graphlibx
- graphdict
- graphflux
- graphnode
- graphsync
- bigpyx
- bignum
- bigmathex
- bigmathix
- bigmathutils
As with many job-focused campaigns conducted by North Korean threat actors, the attack chain begins with establishing a fake company like Veltrix Capital in the blockchain and cryptocurrency trading space, and then setting up the necessary digital real estate to create an illusion of legitimacy.
This includes registering a domain and creating a related GitHub organization to host several repositories for use in coding assessments. The repositories have been found to contain projects based on Python and JavaScript.
“Examination of these repositories didn’t reveal any obvious malicious functionality,” Zanki said. “That is because the malicious functionality was not introduced directly via the job interview repositories, but indirectly – through dependencies hosted on the npm and PyPI open-source package repositories.”
The idea behind setting up these repositories is to trick candidates who apply to its job listings on Reddit and Facebook Groups into running the projects on their machines, effectively installing the malicious dependency and triggering the infection. In some cases, victims are directly contacted by seemingly legitimate recruiters on LinkedIn.
The packages ultimately act as a conduit to deploy a remote access trojan (RAT) that periodically fetches and executes commands from an external server. It supports various commands to gather system information, enumerate files and directories, list running processes, create folders, rename files, delete files, and upload/download files.
Interestingly, the command-and-control (C2) communication is protected by a token-based mechanism to ensure…
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