Malicious code in animatecss-tailwind-bridge (npm)

animatecss-tailwind-bridge 2.0.6 was published to npm on 2026-09-13 by the account bennetwild. The package is part of a fake job interview campaign that targets developers, using the same method as the "Contagious Interview" campaign. A fake company sends a take-home coding assessment repository. The repository commits a web/.npmrc containing a plaintext npm auth token, and its tailwind.config.js loads this package as a Tailwind CSS plugin. The package presents itself as an Animate.css integration ("A configurable, namespaced Animate.css integration for Tailwind CSS", main plugin.js) but declares a runtime dependency on a private scoped npm package (@jasperquinn/postcss-motion-helpers) that is not publicly readable, so npm audit and public scanners cannot see it; it only resolves with the token committed in the lure repository. The package has no install scripts, so --ignore-scripts does not help: the code runs when Tailwind loads the config, i.e. on npm run dev / next dev. Public analysis of the earlier package in this chain (animatecss-tailwind-adapter, by Yunus Aydın) reports that the private package contacts an operator-controlled server and runs the code it receives with full Node.js privileges. A public write-up by a targeted developer describes this package as the dependency in a lure repository for a Solana copy-trading dashboard from a fake company "BlockRoute Labs" (blockroutelabs.com), recruited through Djinni.co. It depends on the same private package as tailwind-animatecss-uniform, which was found in a separate lure. The package's repository field points to a GitHub repository that is not publicly accessible. Related packages from the same template (same description, main file, dependency list and 2.0.x versioning, each published by a different single-use npm account): animatecss-tailwind-adapter 2.0.6 (2026-07-28, depends on private @aaron205whitmore/postcss-animate-utils), animatecss-tailwind-bridge 2.0.6 (2026-09-13, depends on private @jasperquinn/postcss-motion-helpers) and tailwind-animatecss-uniform 2.0.7 (2026-09-28, depends on private @jasperquinn/postcss-motion-helpers).

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Source: ghsa-malware (577f09b61d994cab3e83d6c71e4eed7df79816c61e40e4d85efe9b5252e1c8f2)

Any computer that has this package installed or running should be considered fully compromised. All secrets and keys stored on that computer should be rotated immediately from a different computer. The package should be removed, but as full control of the computer may have been given to an outside entity, there is no guarantee that removing the package will remove all malicious software resulting from installing it.