MAL-2026-11787 Malicious code in @qlik/design-tokens (npm)

npm/@qlik/design-tokens 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.

The package declares a preinstall script (node setup.mjs) that runs automatically on npm install. setup.mjs downloads the Bun runtime from https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/releases/download/bun-v1.3.13/<platform>.zip, extracts and chmods the binary executable, then invokes it via execFileSync against a bundled 727KB sibling file math_init.js. math_init.js is heavily obfuscated (obfuscator-style hex identifiers _0x488df8, shuffled string-array rotation dispatcher, char-code decoding tables, // @bun @bun-cjs header) and is not consumed as a library by the package's declared design-tokens purpose (CSS variables / JSON). setup.mjs itself also contains obfuscator-style identifiers. The Bun release tag is derived from the package's own version string V = "1.3.13" rather than a pinned runtime version, coupling the fetched external artifact to the publisher's package version. Fetching an alternate language runtime specifically to execute an opaque obfuscated bundled payload at install time is the alternate-runtime-dropper pattern; a design-tokens library has no functional need for a second language runtime or an obfuscated 727KB executable blob. Installing this version causes arbitrary code contained in math_init.js to run on the installer's host under the downloaded Bun binary, bypassing Node-based inspection.

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.