criticalSeverity: criticalRisk ratingHow usable this gap is to an attacker. Severity sets the posture penalty: critical −40, high −20, medium −10, low −4, info −1. Higher severity means fix it sooner.Deploy config + token rotationWhere it livesImplementationThis fix is applied in: Deploy config + token rotation. That's the surface you'll edit, DNS, response headers, or a static file.~10 minTime to fixEffortRoughly 10 minutes of hands-on work, propagation aside. Most of these are copy-paste.+40 posture+40 postureScore impactPoints this fix recovers in the ApeCyber posture score (0–100). Posture = 100 minus the severity penalty of every open finding; clearing this finding adds these points back.

Exposed .npmrc: revoke the token before it publishes for someone else

Revoking the leaked npm auth token and removing the .npmrc keeps anyone from publishing packages or reading private ones as you

The threat

The scanner requested /.npmrc and got back a line like //registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=.... That token authenticates you to an npm registry. Depending on its type, it can install your private packages, and if it is a publish or automation token, push new versions of your packages under your account.

The publish case is the dangerous one. Someone with a publish token can ship a malicious version of a package your customers, or your own builds, install: a supply-chain compromise that spreads downstream on its own. Even a read-only token exposes private code and can run up private-registry costs. Bots scrape _authToken strings specifically, so assume it has been collected.

The exact fix

Step 1, contain: revoke the token now. In your registry’s account settings (on npmjs.com under Access Tokens, or the equivalent for a private registry):

  • Revoke or delete the exposed token immediately. That is the whole fix for the secret: a revoked token is inert no matter who holds it.
  • Check recent publish history for versions you did not ship. Deprecate or unpublish anything unexpected, and warn consumers if needed.
  • Issue a fresh, scoped token (read-only where possible, or a short-lived automation token in CI) and update your build to use it.

Step 2, stop serving the file.

  • Remove .npmrc from the web root.
  • Keep it out of deploys: add .npmrc to .gitignore and .netlifyignore, and never copy it into published output. In CI, inject the token from a secret store into an .npmrc that lives outside any served directory, or use NODE_AUTH_TOKEN.
  • Block the path as a backstop.

nginx:

location ~ /\.npmrc {
    deny all;
    return 404;
}

Apache:

<FilesMatch "^\.npmrc">
    Require all denied
</FilesMatch>

A committed .npmrc can be safe, if it holds no token. Use variable substitution (//registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=${NPM_TOKEN}) and keep the real value in an environment secret, so there is nothing to leak even if the file is served.

Verify it

curl -s https://yourdomain.com/.npmrc

You want a 404, not a line containing _authToken=. If the token is visible in the output, the file is still served, and the token still needs revoking.

Proof

The ApeCyber scanner flags this passively with a single GET of /.npmrc, from the outside, touching nothing and never using the token. apecyber.com ships built static output to Netlify, so no .npmrc is present in the served files to read. At −40 this is the largest single line on a posture score, and it clears once the token is revoked and the file is gone.