← Supply-Chain Attack Compendium

num2words

Incident Summary

num2words Maintainer Phishing and Account Takeover

Attackers used the lookalike pypj.org domain to phish PyPI maintainers, steal credentials and 2FA codes, create a new API token, and upload malicious num2words releases. The first suspicious release, 0.5.15, appeared on PyPI without a matching GitHub tag, commit, or release. The later GitHub advisory confirmed that both 0.5.15 and 0.5.16 contained malware and were removed from PyPI. The incident is part of the broader Scavenger-era maintainer phishing wave.

Date
2025-07-28 to 2025-07-31
Category
Open Source
Target Surface
Package registry
Insertion Phase
distribution
Impact
Credential theft
Cause
Social Engineering

What Was Affected

Package num2words
LanguagePython
ComponentLibrary
Artifact typesource archive
Domain typepackage host
Domain pypi.org

Compromised Versions

Incident Context

Motive
Credential Theft
Attribution
Cybercriminal Gang
Transitive
No
User Impact
50000
Observed Duration
3 days

Evidence

Compromised Artifacts

Current Artifacts and Analysis

External References

Source Data

Source record: oss/num2words/meta.yaml