CVE-2026-48160react-tracked was vulnerable to malicious code execution via compromised commits

Official description

react-tracked provides state usage tracking with Proxies. Between 2026-05-18 19:26:36 and 2026-05-19 15:22:45, the default branch contained malicious commits 6978272a7d6ca02225cb747ea69f427512e33699 through 949f1a3d6bb1ff7d1a0dec892afd773e742627e8 that executed remote attacker-controlled code on developer machines during `npm install`. The commits were removed by force-push, but local clones, forks, and direct-SHA URLs may still contain them, and `npm install` against an affected checkout will still execute the code today. The package was not published to npm. `src/install.js` was added and wired into the `postinstall` script. It fetched a JavaScript payload from an attacker-controlled HTTPS endpoint (configurable via an environment variable), disabled TLS verification, and evaluated the response as code with `require` available. Execution was deliberately skipped on CI and cloud/serverless environments, targeting developer workstations. The second-stage payload was attacker-hosted and cannot be reconstructed. Assume full compromise of anything reachable from a Node process with the user's permissions. Those who ran `npm install` against an affected checkout on a developer machine on or after 2026-05-18 19:26:36 should treat the machine as compromised, rotate every credential the machine could reach, audit account activity** since 2026-05-18 19:26:36, and clean local clones.

Affected products (as reported)

References

• https://github.com/dai-shi/react-tracked/security/advisories/GHSA-79c5-q7m9-9c6x x_refsource_CONFIRM