MAL-2026-10397 Malicious code in @car_loans/dealerships-approval (npm)

@car_loans/dealerships-approval 7.1.5 self-describes as a 'browserslist config' but ships a heavily obfuscated postinstall dropper. package.json declares "postinstall": "node scripts/postinstall.js"; that script uses a rotating string-array + RC4 decoder plus byte-array-to-String.fromCharCode wrappers to hide every module name, method, and URL fragment. On npm install, the script HTTPS-GETs a remote payload assembled from base64 fragments, RC4-decrypts the response, writes it to disk, chmods 0o755, and spawns it detached with stdio:'ignore' and unref() — attacker-controlled code executed on the installer's machine with no user interaction. Before and after payload execution, it collects os.hostname(), os.userInfo().username, platform, arch, package name/version, and an event tag and POSTs them to a base64-assembled remote host; it also encodes fingerprint data into <hex>.<rand>.<host> subdomain labels and calls dns.resolve4 as a DNS-tunnel side channel intended to bypass HTTP egress filtering. The package additionally exhibits the classic dependency-confusion shape: an unusual underscore scope @car_loans/*, README that labels it an 'Internal package — Platform Engineering Team', and homepage/repository/registry URLs on the non-existent car-loans.io domain instructing consumers to point .npmrc at https://npm.car-loans.io. Any developer at a targeted organization who resolves this name from the public registry receives immediate install-time code execution and host fingerprint exfiltration.

Any computer that has this package installed or running should be considered fully compromised. All secrets and keys stored on that computer should be rotated immediately from a different computer. The package should be removed, but as full control of the computer may have been given to an outside entity, there is no guarantee that removing the package will remove all malicious software resulting from installing it.