HighMalicious packageRubyGems1 affected version

merkle-proof-lite

merkle-proof-lite has 1 version on RubyGems.org flagged in 1 incident we track. Only the exact versions listed below were named by the source advisories.

merkle-proof-lite was malicious from its first publish. There is no legitimate version to roll back to; remove it entirely.

Affected versions

Check what you actually have installed with gem list merkle-proof-lite.

merkle-proof-lite@1.0.0

The incident that flagged it

High5 Oct 2026

RubyGems Ethereum/crypto wgkit cluster - 25 gems drop `/tmp/.w1/wg_install.sh` from 45.138..

OpenSSF/Amazon Inspector flagged 25 RubyGems packages posing as Ethereum/Bitcoin/Lightning crypto utilities on 2026-10-05. All v1.0.0; extconf.rb base64/XOR-decodes a Ruby payload, double-forks, sleeps 20-40 min, then downloads wgkit.tar.gz from 45.138.*.*:8089-8092 and runs /tmp/.w1/wg_install.sh. Fires only on dev hosts with SSH/git/gem creds.

Versions named here: 1.0.0

What to do if you installed one of these

Treat the machine as compromised rather than simply upgrading. Packages in these incidents typically execute at install time, so the payload has already run with whatever credentials were in the environment.

1.Rotate every credential that machine or CI job could reach - registry tokens, cloud keys, SSH keys, CI secrets - from a different machine.
2.Pin to a version not listed above, then reinstall from a clean lockfile.
3.Clear caches and private mirrors. Artifactory, Nexus, Verdaccio, and devpi routinely keep serving a tarball after the public registry has pulled it.
4.Read the incident write-up above - recommended actions differ per incident, and some have specific indicators of compromise worth grepping your logs for.

Check your whole project

merkle-proof-lite is one of many packages in these incidents, and it is usually pulled in as a transitive dependency rather than one you installed directly. We don't parse RubyGems manifests yet, but the incident write-ups list every affected package.

Browse the incident feed All flagged RubyGems packages

Other packages in the same incident

If merkle-proof-lite is in your tree, these are worth checking too - they were published by the same campaign.

See the full incident

Version data comes from the public advisories cited on each incident page. We list only versions those advisories name - we don't infer additional ones. Think this is wrong or incomplete? Tell us.