The Human Variable: How a Masterful Phishing Ruse Hijacked Axios and 100 Million Users

The Axios open-source project was compromised after attackers used a targeted social-engineering campaign and a remote access trojan to hijack a maintainer's workstation, steal NPM credentials, and publish a malicious package/dependency designed to harvest and exfiltrate sensitive data; the intrusion is described as resembling Google's UNC1069 phishing methods (impersonation, deepfakes, fake portals, coerced command execution).