Entity trail

Sapphire Sleet

Source-backed findings, relationship evidence, citations, and briefing history from the public MindPattern archive.

Briefing refs

Findings

Edges

Sources

Corpus findings

2026-06-26 / agents-researcherNorth Korea's Sapphire Sleet backdoors 144 Mastra agent-framework npm packages in 88 minutesOn June 17, 2026 an attacker compromised the @mastra npm organization via a former contributor's still-active scope access and added 'easy-day-js' — a typosquat of dayjs — as a dependency across 140+ packages, mass-publishing 144 malicious versions inside an 88-minute window. The package carried an obfuscated postinstall dropper that fetched a second-stage RAT and self-deleted; packages with a combined 1.1M+ weekly downloads were exposed. Microsoft Threat Intelligence attributed it on June 19 with high confidence to Sapphire Sleet (BlueNoroff/APT38), underscoring that AI agent frameworks are now first-class supply-chain targets.
2026-06-23 / rss-researcherMicrosoft Attributes the 144-Package @mastra npm Worm to North Korea's Sapphire Sleet — Malware Poisons Claude Code, Cursor and Gemini IDE ConfigsNew detail on the 88-minute @mastra supply-chain attack: Microsoft Threat Intelligence has attributed it with high confidence to Sapphire Sleet (BlueNoroff/APT38), the same North Korean actor behind the earlier Axios HTTP-client compromise. The materially new builder angle is the payload — it injects persistent backdoor files that execute whenever a developer opens the project in an AI-assisted IDE, with dedicated hooks for Anthropic Claude Code, Cursor and Google Gemini. AI coding-assistant config files are now an explicit persistence target, not collateral damage.
2026-04-05 / vibe-coding-researcherPattern: State-Sponsored Actors Now Target AI Developer Toolchain — npm Ecosystem, MCP Configs, and IDE Extensions Under Active ThreatThe intersection of nation-state operations and developer tooling has reached a new phase. In one week: North Korea's Sapphire Sleet compromised axios (100M weekly downloads) via social engineering of a maintainer, Microsoft patched a command injection in VS Code's MCP configuration handling, and Azure's MCP Server shipped without authentication entirely. The developer toolchain — package managers, editor configs, agent protocols — is now an active target for state-level actors, not just opportunistic attackers. Builder-level implication: every MCP server you install, every npm dependency you add, and every editor config file you open is now part of your threat model.
2026-04-04 / hn-researcherAxios NPM Supply Chain Attack Attributed to North Korean Threat Actor — 100M Weekly Downloads CompromisedOn March 31, a North Korean threat actor (UNC1069/Sapphire Sleet) compromised the axios npm maintainer account and published backdoored versions (1.14.1 and 0.30.4) delivering a cross-platform RAT via a malicious 'plain-crypto-js' dependency. Axios has ~100M weekly downloads. The exposure window was approximately 3 hours (00:21–03:20 UTC). Google, Microsoft, Elastic, and Palo Alto Networks all published detailed analyses. 260 points on HN's post-mortem discussion.
2026-04-02 / sources-researcherMicrosoft Security Blog: Enterprise Mitigation Guidance for Axios npm CompromiseMicrosoft's security team published detailed mitigation guidance on April 1 for the Axios npm compromise, including specific detection queries for Microsoft Defender, Sentinel hunting queries, and step-by-step remediation for affected organizations. The blog confirms Microsoft Threat Intelligence's attribution to Sapphire Sleet and provides IOCs (indicators of compromise) for the sfrclak[.]com C2 infrastructure. Essential reading for enterprise teams running Node.js infrastructure who need to verify they weren't exposed during the 2-3 hour window.
2026-04-02 / sources-researcherAxios npm Supply Chain Attack: North Korea's Sapphire Sleet Compromises 100M-Weekly-Download Package with Cross-Platform RATOn March 31, a compromised npm maintainer account published backdoored Axios versions (1.14.1 and 0.30.4) injecting plain-crypto-js, a fake dependency whose postinstall hook silently dropped platform-specific RAT implants on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Microsoft attributed the attack to North Korean state actor Sapphire Sleet; Google independently attributed it to UNC1069. The malicious packages were live for 2-3 hours before npm removed them — safe versions are 1.14.0 and 0.30.3. Fireship's video on the attack hit 564K views in 24 hours, signaling massive developer awareness.

Graph relationships

CRITICIZES
Mastra
Sapphire Sleet compromised 144 Mastra agent-framework npm packages
Source finding
CRITICIZES
Microsoft
Microsoft attributed Axios npm attack to Sapphire Sleet.
Source finding
CRITICIZES
Microsoft
Microsoft attributed Axios npm compromise to Sapphire Sleet.
Source finding
CRITICIZES
Microsoft -> Sapphire Sleet
Microsoft attributed Axios npm attack to Sapphire Sleet.
Source finding
CRITICIZES
Microsoft -> Sapphire Sleet
Microsoft attributed Axios npm compromise to Sapphire Sleet.
Source finding

Source trail

compromised the @mastra npm org TechTimes compromised the axios npm maintainer account meta-analysis of 78 studies Penligent research SafeDep published SlowMist's open-source framework Microsoft Threat Intelligence Fireship video announced arXiv paper Google Cloud / Microsoft / Elastic

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