← Supply-Chain Attack Compendium

cline

Incident Summary

Cline CLI unauthorized npm publish installs openclaw

An unauthorized party used an exposed npm publish token to publish cline@2.3.0. The release was byte-identical to cline@2.2.3 except for a postinstall script that globally installed the unrelated openclaw package. Cline reported no malicious code delivery, user-data access, source-code compromise, or VS Code/OpenVSX/JetBrains extension compromise. The exposed token traced back to a vulnerable AI-powered issue-triage workflow that had been removed but whose npm credential was not revoked. Maintainers deprecated 2.3.0, published clean 2.4.0, and revoked the token.

Date
2026-02-17
Category
Open Source
Target Surface
Package registry
Insertion Phase
distribution
Impact
Unauthorized Software Installation
Cause
Compromised npm token/CI cache poisoning

What Was Affected

Package cline
LanguageJavaScript
ComponentCLI Tool
Artifact typesource archive
Domain typepackage host
Domain npmjs.com

Compromised Versions

Incident Context

Motive
Unauthorized Software Installation
Transitive
No
User Impact
4000
Observed Duration
0 days

Evidence

Compromised Artifacts

Current Artifacts and Analysis

External References

Source Data

Source record: oss/cline/meta.yaml