My 8-Year-Old Open-Source Project was a Victim of a Major Cyber Attack

By Shalitha Suranga · Published March 9, 2026 · 1 min read · Source: Level Up Coding

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My 8-Year-Old Open-Source Project was a Victim of a Major Cyber Attack

You could be the next victim— here is how to stay safe with modern open-source development

Photo by Nik on Unsplash, edited with Canva

We often worry more about imagination than reality, but how do you face your life when your worst fears become a reality in a way that you never imagined? This has happened to me recently with my open-source development works. A popular project I maintain on GitHub was among the victims of a major supply-chain attack campaign, most unusually due to a loophole in its development workflow.

This can happen to you, too. If you are not in luck, an incident like this can even kill your decade-long work in a single day and damage your project’s reputation in a way that you can’t ever recover. Here is the story of the worst situation I ever faced with my open-source development career and how open-source security advisors and luck (yes, it works sometimes) saved my 8-year-old open-source project, Neutralinojs.

What is this project?

Neutralinojs, a lightweight cross-platform desktop application development project, was initiated in 2018 with some other developers, but I became the sole maintainer soon after. From 2018 to today, I have dedicated countless hours to building this and creating a good…

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