If you publish software you have responsibilities and no "provided as-is" clause can fully free you from it. Especially if you do so with the intention to cause harm.
> It's your fault if you blindly trust random 3rd-party code on the internet and have your mission-critical software depend on it.
The problem is not to "rust random 3rd-party code on the internet" but the "blindly" part.
Like never ever deploy without locking dependencies and testing any new dependencies before updating the lock and preferable even give the changes/diff a shallow review.
I think anyone providing programs (instead of libs) installed though npm (or "blind" untested CI builds for releases) is as much a problem as the one who caused the problems this time. Maybe even more as they also open the door for other more malicious attacks.
Says who?
I can publish whatever the heck I want to my project and unless you and I have a contract that clearly defines expectations and resolutions, you're SOL.
You can't just update your extensively used code to add some ransomware or virus and be let off the hook because you warned users in a text file. The legal system will check what did you know and what your intentions were.
In this case, not that the author did a bad attack, but it's still a jerk move when the intention was uniquely to disrupt others and break things.