Investigations into the Nx "s1ngularity" supply chain attack have revealed a massive data breach, with thousands of account tokens and repository secrets leaked. According to a post-incident evaluation by Wiz researchers, the Nx compromise exposed over 2,180 accounts and 7,200 repositories. The impact is still ongoing as many of the leaked secrets remain valid.
On August 26, 2025, attackers exploited a flaw in a GitHub Actions workflow within the Nx repository. They published a malicious version of the Nx package on NPM, which included a credential-stealing script called "telemetry.js." The malware targeted Linux and macOS systems, attempting to steal sensitive information such as GitHub and NPM tokens, SSH keys, and cryptocurrency wallets. It then uploaded these secrets to public GitHub repositories named "s1ngularity-repository."
A New and Evolving Threat
What made this attack unique was the use of AI. The malware used command-line tools for AI platforms like Claude, Q, and Gemini to search for and harvest sensitive data with prompts. The attackers continuously fine-tuned these prompts to increase their success, showing a sophisticated understanding of AI.
The Scope of the Attack
The attack unfolded in three phases:
- Phase 1 (August 26-27): The initial malicious Nx package infected 1,700 users, leading to the leak of over 2,000 unique secrets and 20,000 files from infected systems.
- Phase 2 (August 28-29): The attackers used the stolen GitHub tokens to change private repositories to public, exposing another 480 accounts and 6,700 private repositories.
- Phase 3 (August 31): The attackers targeted a single organization, using two compromised accounts to publicly expose an additional 500 private repositories.
Nx's Response
The Nx team has provided a detailed analysis of the attack. They explained that the compromise was caused by a pull request title injection, which allowed the attackers to run malicious code with elevated permissions. This triggered the publishing of the malicious package and led to the theft of the NPM token.
In response, the malicious packages were removed, compromised tokens were revoked, and two-factor authentication has been implemented on all publisher accounts. To prevent future incidents, the Nx project has adopted NPM's Trusted Publisher model and added manual approval for pull request workflows.
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