You’ve probably seen “supply chain attack” in the headlines a lot lately — and for good reason. In the last two weeks alone, three widely used software tools were compromised in separate supply chain attacks, affecting millions of downloads worldwide.

So What Is a Supply Chain Attack?

A supply chain attack happens when an attacker compromises a trusted piece of software or a vendor’s systems before it reaches you. Instead of targeting your business directly, they poison something you already use — a software library, an update server, a plug-in — so that when you install or update it, you unknowingly pull in malicious code.

Think of it like someone tampering with ingredients at a food processing plant. The restaurant didn’t do anything wrong. The ingredients arrived looking normal. But they’d been altered at the source.

Why It’s in the News Right Now

As reported by PacketWatch, recent incidents include compromised versions of Axios (a tool used in roughly 80% of cloud environments), the Trivy vulnerability scanner, and the LiteLLM AI library — all trojaned to steal credentials and deploy backdoors. These aren’t obscure tools. They sit inside critical business infrastructure, and the Axios compromise alone has been attributed to a North Korean threat group.

Why It Matters for Your Business

You don’t need to be a software developer to be exposed. If your IT systems use open-source components — and almost all do — you’re in the supply chain. Your POS system, your accounting platform, even your security tools can be vectors.

The practical takeaway: make sure your IT provider is monitoring software dependencies and verifying the integrity of updates before they hit your systems. It’s not something you can eyeball yourself — it requires tooling and process.

Want to understand where your business is exposed? Talk to All IT about your security posture.