--- title: A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4,000 Developer Machines description: A detailed breakdown of 'Clinejection', a five-step supply chain attack that compromised ~4,000 developer machines in February 2026. An attacker injected a... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/a-github-issue-title-compromised-4-000-developer-machines-e5lzhfwln twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4,000 Developer Machines | daily.dev og:description: A detailed breakdown of 'Clinejection', a five-step supply chain attack that compromised ~4,000 developer machines in February 2026. An attacker injected a... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/a-github-issue-title-compromised-4-000-developer-machines-e5lzhfwln og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/E5LzHFWlN.png og:image:alt: A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4,000 Developer Machines og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4,000 Developer Machines **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 7 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A detailed breakdown of 'Clinejection', a five-step supply chain attack that compromised ~4,000 developer machines in February 2026. An attacker injected a malicious instruction into a GitHub issue title, which an AI triage bot (using claude-code-action) executed as a legitimate command. This triggered cache poisoning via Cacheract, which evicted legitimate GitHub Actions cache entries and replaced them with compromised ones. When Cline's nightly release workflow ran, it restored the poisoned node_modules, exposing npm and marketplace tokens. The attacker used the stolen npm token to publish cline@2.3.0 with a postinstall hook that silently installed OpenClaw—a separate AI agent with shell access and persistent daemon capabilities—on every developer's machine. A botched credential rotation left the stolen token active long enough for the attack to succeed despite prior disclosure. The post analyzes why existing controls (npm audit, code review, provenance attestations) failed, details Cline's remediation steps including OIDC provenance adoption, and frames the incident as a broader architectural problem with AI agents in CI/CD pipelines processing untrusted input with privileged access. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [How “Clinejection” Turned an AI Bot into a Supply Chain Attack](https://daily.dev/posts/how-clinejection-turned-an-ai-bot-into-a-supply-chain-attack-jkyi3izxq) · Snyk · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Cline CLI npm Package Compromised via Suspected Cache Poison...](https://daily.dev/posts/cline-cli-npm-package-compromised-via-suspected-cache-poison--tjo4h7drs) · Socket · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Claude Code GitHub Action flaw enabled repository hijacking](https://daily.dev/posts/claude-code-github-action-flaw-enabled-repository-hijacking-5srzxdjm5) · The Next Web · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#github-actions](https://daily.dev/tags/github-actions), [#npm](https://daily.dev/tags/npm), [#prompt-injection](https://daily.dev/tags/prompt-injection), [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/a-github-issue-title-compromised-4-000-developer-machines-e5lzhfwln) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4,000 Developer Machines","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-github-issue-title-compromised-4-000-developer-machines-e5lzhfwln","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-github-issue-title-compromised-4-000-developer-machines-e5lzhfwln"},"datePublished":"2026-03-05T18:49:39.369Z","dateModified":"2026-03-15T06:32:33.137Z","description":"A detailed breakdown of 'Clinejection', a five-step supply chain attack that compromised ~4,000 developer machines in February 2026. An attacker injected a...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/6624834a6d4f97dc1c03f53cbd9a9dbb?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/6624834a6d4f97dc1c03f53cbd9a9dbb?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-github-issue-title-compromised-4-000-developer-machines-e5lzhfwln","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"ai-agents,github-actions,npm,prompt-injection,security","timeRequired":"PT7M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4,000 Developer Machines"}]} ```