[BUG] npm couchdb database is getting spammed with hundreds of thousand of new sequence numbers

[6mile]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

This issue exists in the latest npm version

• I am using the latest npm

Current Behavior

The production npm couchdb instance https://skimdb.npmjs.com/registry is experiencing about 30 times the normal amount of package changes. Typically, there are an average of about 30k new sequence numbers created in that CouchDB instance. Yesterday, there were 284381 new sequence numbers, and in the last 18 hours, there have been over 812,000 new sequence numbers. Something is really wrong here.
This does not look like malicious actors are creating new spam packages. Instead, all the packages getting these new sequence numbers have the last modified dates of May 18-22, 2022.

Moreover, since sequence 39472491 all package updates made to the production npm couchdb are in alphabetical order!

Expected Behavior

Roughly 30,000 package changes a day, not 800,000!

Steps To Reproduce

1. Run curl -s "https://skimdb.npmjs.com/registry/" and compare that against historical trends.

Environment

• npm:
• Node.js:
• OS Name:
• System Model Name:
• npm config:

; copy and paste output from `npm config ls` here

[milaninfy]

Closing: this looks to be an issue with the registry which is outside the scope of this repo. For registry support please go to npmjs.com/support. If you believe this is a bug with the cli, please provide further clarifying details.