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Arch Linux Now Believes Malware Incident Under Control: More Than 1,500 Affected Packages
(www.phoronix.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2026
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We're currently at 1621.
https://md.archlinux.org/s/SxbqukK6IA
I'm still missing any sort of in-depth info about all this.
Start here. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=313892
AUR, the Arch User Repository is under an attack. The attack vector is any orphaned package that doesn't have a current maintainer. Those packages are being taken over by a malicious group. https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/archlinux/comments/1u3tn4e/tons_of_new_infected_aur_packages_were_just/ If a package maintainer quits/leaves/abandons a project, anybody can take control of the package if there's been no maintainer for a certain period of time. What we're learning now is that this process could be automated and done en masse. They're modifying PKGBUILD files to use a java script installer like npm, bun, yarn, nodejs to shove malware onto a system. So if you have a package that's marked as infected and you've updated your PC using an AUR helper like yay or paru during this time without checking the PKGBUILD you could be in trouble.
What users are advised to do is not update any AUR packages until otherwise noted. Scan your systems for any packages where the PKGBUILD reports installing an atomic-lockfile, js-digest file through npm, bun, nodejs, yarn and the like. Delete those packages.
The number of infected packages has gone from 400 to 600 to 1500 in a matter of hours last night. The AUR team has been on top of it almost the moment it got recognized. The AUR has well over 100,000 packages. Last night another user ran some numbers and at the time 718 infected packages had no users at all. The most popular package is an old Gnome dependency libgdata that was dropped years ago but could still be on systems. There's a lot of old packages using ancient python2 deps that look to be infected as well. https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/archlinux/comments/1u4fzea/according_to_pkgstats_these_are_the_most_popular/ list of infected packages https://md.archlinux.org/s/SxbqukK6IA Seems like this was caught because old maintainers started getting emails about package updates to old projects they were on. Those OGs sprung into action.
Thanks. The forum thread's beginning suggests a concerted effort around adding the line
npm install atomic-lockfileto repos.Searching for that I quickly found this: https://www.sonatype.com/blog/atomic-arch-npm-campaign-adds-malicious-dependency and related articles.
Then it seems to change to 'bun' and 'js-digest':
bun add figures debug js-digestApparently both atomic-lockfile and js-digest are upstream npm/javascript packages that have been infected with datamining malware.
BTW, admins reported as of 12h ago it's all cleaned up.
They got hacked.
Use Debian. /s
I meant something I can read.
I don't think so.
I mean
Like...
Yes?
Yes, that's what happened. That is the correct word for it.
Attackers exploited vulnerabilities in a system in order to run code on other people's machines
Wouldn't even suprise me if they just did it fo the lulz.
me too
What to do if I found a package I installed to be in that list? libgdata to be specific?
Edit: Seems that the libgdata package was last installed on March 05.
Have a check if you updated it recently (PKGBUILD history, about June 10-12). If not you're fine.
If:
(reference)
Personally I would reset everything if I got anything, to kill both any infection and my paranoia. Then reset credentials.
Probably reinstall (all is supposed to be fixed as of over 12h ago). This time check the PKGBUILD and also whichever (git) repo the software is pulled from.
See if infected versions of npm packages atomic-lockfile and js-digest are installed.
See here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=313892
Was it installed from the aur? If not, you're fine
libgdata here is specifically very messy. It was an official package since it was a required dependency for older versions of GNOME, then in GNOME 50 they dropped the dependency and so did Arch from their repos. But because pacman doesn't remove dangling dependencies, you end up with libgdata still installed, until Arch Linux moves dropped packages into the AUR as an orphan, which happened in this case 5/31. This allowed it to be perfectly timed for the attackers to pick it up on 6/11. Now, you'd inadvertently update libgdata from an AUR source if you're using an AUR helper.
Yes that seems to be the case. But on 12th of June, I did a yay update. But only librewolf-bin was updated. libgdata (0.18.1-5) was last updated on March 05 2026 for me.
Also I did some digging around. Seems like any packages that were installed using a AUR helper (like yay in my case) would leave logs in the
/var/log/pacman. You can see them like this,grep "package_name" /var/log/pacmanFor yay installed packages you can see they are getting installed from
~/.config/yay/package_name. But for my libgdata, it simply says[ALPM] installed libgdata (0.18.1-5).