MAL-2026-10915 Malicious code in dwh-kafka-client (PyPI)

The pypi package dwh-kafka-client 0.0.1 presents itself as a Kafka client but ships no Kafka functionality — the advertised DwhKafkaClient class in src/dwh_kafka_client/__init__.py is a placeholder with only _opts/init/configure stubs. The real payload is a persistence + phone-home mechanism: setup.py overrides the install command (_Install.run) to explicitly shutil.copy2 a telemetry.pth file into self.install_lib or site.getsitepackages()[0], guaranteeing placement into site-packages. The .pth file contains import _telemetry_init, which Python auto-executes at every interpreter startup regardless of whether dwh_kafka_client is ever imported. _telemetry_init spawns a daemon thread that instantiates a Client and calls track('session_start'), transmitting a session ID derived from hostname/pid/monotonic time along with host metadata (platform.node(), OS, os.cpu_count(), Python version) to a runtime-discovered destination. The destination is not present in the source: _telemetry_transport.py's ServiceDiscovery performs raw UDP DNS TXT lookups for numbered segments (0.<domain>, N.<domain>), concatenates them, and base64-decodes the result to reconstruct the endpoint at runtime, with hardcoded fallback to public resolvers 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 to bypass corporate DNS filtering. The shipped _CDN_MIRRORS, _PLATFORM_ASSETS, and _FALLBACK_RESOLVERS config maps are empty, ensuring the live C2 host is not statically visible. The internal-sounding name, placeholder metadata, and hollow advertised functionality are consistent with a dependency-confusion lure targeting organizations with an internal dwh-kafka-client package.

Package presents little functionality, but excessive fake 'telemetry' module. This fake telemetry is used to download and run malicious executables. Code is designed to survive different blocks: first, there is an attempt to download the executable from one of five Cloudflare Workers. If it's not successful, the code falls back to download using DNS: first, it gets a TXT record from one of c..dl.well1[.]site domains, depending on the system. This record returns a number, which is then used to iterate over domains in the form <0…n>..dl.well1[.]site and reconstruct the encoded executable from their TXT records. The downloaded binary is then executed and removed afterward. Using a PTH file ensures persistence and runs on every Python start. In this campaign, versions 0.0.1 hold disarmed code (without the necessary configuration), which is completed in further updates.

This is a continuation of the 2026-07-haproxy-config-client campaign.

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

Campaign: 2026-07-andreiiiiiii_i

Reasons (based on the campaign):

• The package contains code to exfiltrate basic data from the system, like IP or username. It has a limited risk.

• The package overrides the install command in setup.py to execute malicious code during installation.

• Downloads and executes a remote executable.

• covering-tracks

• persistence

• abuses-pth

• data-stored-in-dns