The npm Registry Has 2 Million Packages — 14% Have Known Vulnerabilities

I ran npm audit on 50 popular starter templates last week. The results were shocking: 43 out of 50 had at least one known vulnerability. Seven had critical vulnerabilities that could allow remote code execution. And these are templates that thousands of developers use as their project foundation. The Scale of the Problem npm has over 2 million packages. According to Snyk's State of Open Source Security report, roughly 14% of them contain at least one known vulnerability. That's 280,000+ packages with security issues sitting in the registry right now. I Audited 50 Popular Starter Templates I picked the 50 most-starred React, Next.js, Express, and Node.js starter templates on GitHub and ran npm audit on each. Results Summary Category Templates With Vulns Critical High React starters 15 13 (87%) 3 8 Next.js examples 10 7 (70%) 1 4 Express boilerplates 15 14 (93%) 2 9 Node.js tools 10 9 (90%) 1 6 Total 50 43 (86%) 7 27 The 5 Most Common Vulnerabilities 1. Prototype Pollution (found in 31 t