SynOI vs Socket / Snyk · built for platform and security teams

Your npm token gets phished. Then what?

Socket and Snyk catch the malicious package after it ships: a scan flags the new version once it lands in the registry, usually within minutes to hours. SynOI Supply Chain Guard is designed to stop the publish itself, by requiring a human-approval step before a stolen token can complete one. Different layer, same problem. Here is the honest state of both.

Status, plainly: Supply Chain Guard is in active development; public beta Q1 2027. It is not the product to run today. Socket, Snyk, and Aikido are shipping, production scanners, and we recommend running one of them right now.

The short version

Today: keep Socket, Snyk, or Aikido running. They catch malicious versions after publish, and that coverage exists right now.

Later: Supply Chain Guard adds a publisher-side gate, so a phished token alone can't push a release without a human approving it first.

Axis-by-axis

Where Socket and Snyk win today, we say so.

Axis
SynOI Supply Chain Guard
Socket / Snyk
Where it sits
Publisher-side: the gate is the npm/PyPI publish step itself.
Consumer-side: scans packages already in the registry.
Available today
No. Supply Chain Guard is in active development; public beta Q1 2027.
Yes. Socket and Snyk are shipping, production scanners today.
Detection window (once SCG ships)
Designed for zero-minute: a stolen token alone cannot complete a publish without human approval.
Minutes to hours after publish, once a scan flags the new version.
What it catches
A compromised maintainer token being used to publish, before the bad version ever reaches the registry.
A malicious version already in the registry, via signature and behavior scanning.
Should you use both?
Yes. We recommend running Socket, Snyk, or Aikido today regardless of SCG.
Yes. Different layer of the same problem, not a replacement for either.
Signed audit trail
Every SCG decision (planned) mints a hybrid Ed25519 + ML-DSA-65 Decision Receipt, publicly verifiable.
Scan results live in the vendor dashboard.

Claims about Socket and Snyk are drawn from their public product documentation. We'll correct any inaccuracy on request: via the contact form.

Why the publish gate matters

A scan after the fact still means someone downloaded the bad version first.

Mini Shai-Hulud spread to more than 170 packages before existing scanners caught it, roughly fourteen hours after publish. Consumer-side scanning is real protection and it is worth having, but it is structurally a race: the malicious version has to exist and spread before anything can flag it.

Supply Chain Guard's design moves the gate one step earlier, to the publish itself: a maintainer token alone, even a phished one, can't push a release without a human-in-the-loop (HITL) approval on a separate channel. If that works as designed, the malicious version never reaches the registry for any scanner to catch. That is a design goal today, not a shipped result: SCG is in active development, public beta Q1 2027.

Run Socket or Snyk today. Talk to us about what's next.

We mean it about running a consumer-side scanner now. If publisher-side gating is something you'd want to pilot when it's ready, tell us about your registry setup.