npm v12’s Biggest Security Change: From Implicit to Explicit Trust

The Shai-Hulud npm worm payload behind May's @AntV attack resurfaced after 111 days: four new packages on September 7 carried the identical hash, despite npm's new publish-time malware scanning.

This incident analysis explains systemic gaps in package registry security exposed by recent malicious campaigns.

This coverage gives security teams current context for monitoring, validation, and remediation.

npm v12 (July 2026) stops running dependency install scripts by default, requiring an allowlist—closing the postinstall vector exploited by Shai-Hulud and Nx, plus stricter git dependency rules.

An unofficial guide to package security: minimize dependencies, adopt cooldowns, control ingestion, harden execution environments, and detect compromises early - lessons from TeamPCP and Axios.

Wiz Research on Shai-Hulud 2.0's long tail: infections ran 100-200 repos/day, 90%+ via a zombie OpenVSX extension; a clean release cut it to a handful, while leaked secrets remain unrotated.