MAL-2025-191671 Malicious code in aclient-sdk (PyPI)

This campaign is built from two parts:

1. packages named like time-check-server, snapshot-photo contain an innocent-looking code that sends "date" to a remote server,
2. packages named like alicloud-client are clones of legit aliyun-python-sdk-core package, with a small change in the client.py code, where it imports the time-check-server and calls it, but instead of a date, the credentials to the cloud are exfiltrated. There are also variations with AWS clients

Apparently, the campaign started at least 2 years ago with the snapshot-photo package containing the same functionality as the newer time-check-server (see https://github.com/pypi-data/pypi-mirror-238/blob/code/packages/snapshot-photo/snapshot_photo-0.0.3-py3-none-any.whl/snapshot_photo/date_format.py).

Category: MALICIOUS - The campaign has clearly malicious intent, like infostealers.

Campaign: 2025-02-alicloud-client

Reasons (based on the campaign):

• clones-real-package

• action-hidden-in-lib-usage

• The malicious code is intentionally included in a dependency of the package

• exfiltration-cloud-tokens