---
title: North Korea Used Obscure npm Package as a Dress Rehearsal Before the Axios Hack
description: North Korean hackers likely used typo-crypto as a trial run before targeting axios, affecting 1 in 10 cloud environments in just hours.
canonical_url: https://codekeeper.co/ticker/north-korean-hackers-target-npm-packages
---

# North Korea Used Obscure npm Package as a Dress Rehearsal Before the Axios Hack

North Korean hackers likely used typo-crypto as a trial run before targeting axios, affecting 1 in 10 cloud environments in just hours.

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By Content Team Jul 30, 2026

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Amazon's security team assesses with medium confidence that a North Korean hacking group — tracked as UNC1069, Sapphire Sleet and Stardust Chollima — quietly compromised a small npm package called typo-crypto in March 2025, a full year before attacking axios, one of the internet's most downloaded libraries at 100 million weekly downloads. Amazon CISO CJ Moses called typo-crypto a "rehearsal" — a low-profile test run to refine the group's methods before hitting bigger targets, without "putting that on the big stage." The attackers didn't break in: "They basically earned the trust of an employee to hand them the keys," Moses said. Two other packages, debug and chalk, were also hit in September 2025. Wiz found roughly 1 in 10 cloud environments were affected within just two hours. **Source:** [CyberScoop](https://cyberscoop.com/amazon-north-korea-open-source-software-attacks/)

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