MAL-2026-11750 Malicious code in @ornikar/eslint-config-react (npm)

npm/@ornikar/eslint-config-react is affected by the large-scale, self-propagating npm supply-chain worm of 2026-08-04 (the "Shai-Hulud: Here We Go Again" wave) — the same campaign that began with the compromise of the keyv and cacheable maintainer account. The listed version(s) were trojanized and republished by the worm after it reached an npm publish token belonging to a maintainer in this namespace; the payload enumerates every package a stolen token controls and republishes each with the same hook, so many packages under this scope were poisoned in the same short window. Every poisoned release adds a preinstall hook ("preinstall": "node setup.mjs") that runs on a bare npm install, before any project code. setup.mjs downloads a standalone Bun runtime and runs a byte-identical, heavily obfuscated ~728 KB second-stage credential stealer (shipped as Math_Symbol.js / math_init.js). It harvests GitHub, npm, AWS, GCP, Azure, HashiCorp Vault and Kubernetes credentials plus generic secrets and private keys (TruffleHog-style sweep), reads CI/CD secrets and identifies build runners, then republishes further packages the stolen token can reach. Rather than a fixed command-and-control host, it exfiltrates stolen findings to attacker-created GitHub repositories (descriptions reading "Shai-Hulud: Here We Go Again") and over DNS. Treat any environment that installed an affected version (with install scripts enabled) as compromised: rotate and revoke all reachable credentials (npm and GitHub tokens, cloud keys, Vault/Kubernetes secrets, and CI org/repo secrets). Part of the August 2026 npm worm that poisoned 400+ packages across many organizations.

This release of @ornikar/eslint-config-react declares scripts.preinstall = "node setup.mjs", which fires automatically on npm install. setup.mjs is obfuscated (obfuscator.io-style _0xNNNN identifiers, per-function string-property lookup tables) and downloads the Bun runtime from https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/releases/download/bun-v<version>/...zip, extracts it, then execFileSyncs the downloaded Bun binary against a sibling file math_init.js. math_init.js is a ~727KB @bun @bun-cjs bundle with a shuffled string/number array and a custom character-substitution decoder (hc1jfK9) — its real behavior is hidden from static inspection and it is executed under an alternate JavaScript runtime that Node-focused install-time scanners do not observe. The declared purpose of the package is a plain ESLint flat-config (main: index.js); fetching a second JavaScript runtime and executing a 700KB obfuscated bundle at install time has no relationship to that purpose. The tarball composition (ESLint-config metadata alongside an obfuscated loader, an obfuscated payload, and a preinstall lifecycle hook that wires them together) is consistent with a maintainer-account compromise or malicious release into the @ornikar scope rather than a legitimate publish.

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.