peacenotwar is a piece of malware, which has been characterized as protestware, created by Brandon Nozaki Miller. In March 2022, it was added as a dependency in an update for node-ipc, a common JavaScript dependency.
Background
Between 7 March and 8 March 2022, Brandon Nozaki Miller, the maintainer of the node-ipc package on the npm package registry, released two updates allegedly containing malicious code targeting systems in Russia and Belarus (CVE-2022-23812). This code recursively overwrites all files on the user's system drive with heart emojis. A week later, Miller added the peacenotwar module as a dependency to node-ipc. The function of peacenotwar was to create a text file titled WITH-LOVE-FROM-AMERICA.txt on the desktop of affected machines, containing a message in protest of the Russo-Ukrainian War; it also imports a dependency on a package (npm colors package) that would result in a Denial of Service (DoS) to any server using it.
Impact
Because node-ipc was a common software dependency...
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
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