GHSA-9ppg-jx86-fqw7: Unauthorized npm publish of cline@2.3.0 with modified postinstall script
On February 17, 2026 at 3:26 AM PT, an unauthorized party used a compromised npm publish token to publish an update to Cline CLI on the NPM registry: cline@2.3.0. The published package contains a modified package.json with an added postinstall script:
"postinstall": "npm install -g openclaw@latest"
This causes openclaw (an unrelated, non-malicious open source package) to be globally installed when cline@2.3.0 is installed. No other files were modified – the CLI binary (dist/cli.mjs) and all other package contents are identical to the legitimate cline@2.2.3 release.
A corrected version (2.4.0) was published at 11:23 AM PT and 2.3.0 was deprecated at 11:30 AM PT. The compromised token has been revoked and npm publishing now uses OIDC provenance via GitHub Actions.
References
Code Behaviors & Features
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