MAL-2026-10676 Malicious code in commonjs-assert (npm)

The package name resembles Node.js's built-in assert module. On require(), index.js spawns a detached node child process against lib/chai/utils/assertion.js. That file is a single-line obfuscator.io-style bundle (rotated string array, custom-base64 decoder, hex-indexed accessors) whose runtime behavior is to require http/https, perform an HTTP GET against a URL reconstructed from the encoded string array, and pass the response body to new Function(..., body)(require) — remote content fetched at import time and executed with Node's require available. The obfuscation hides the destination URL from static inspection and shields the network-to-eval sink. Any project that requires or imports this package silently triggers arbitrary remote code execution on the installer's host.

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.