MAL-2026-12092 Malicious code in @wethenorth12/etherjs (npm)
Malicious package
Published
MAL-2026-12092 is a malicious package: @wethenorth12/etherjs (npm). Every version was published to cause harm.
Task:
1. Search this repository's dependency manifests and lockfiles for the package, including transitive dependencies.
2. If it is present, remove it, regenerate the lockfile with the project's package manager, and replace whatever it was used for.
3. List any CI runners, developer machines or containers that installed it, so their secrets can be rotated.
4. If the package is not used anywhere, say so and change nothing.
Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/MAL-2026-12092/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/MAL-2026-12092/index.md)
- Package
- @wethenorth12/etherjs
- Registry
- npm
What is MAL-2026-12092?
MAL-2026-12092 is a malicious package in @wethenorth12/etherjs, published on 5 Aug 2026.
Official description
@wethenorth12/[email protected] is a typosquat of the ethers package (package name, description, and author string 'ricmoo' all mimic the real package; index.js re-exports the real 'ethers' when available as a benign facade). Its postinstall hook decodes a base64-embedded Node payload into a randomized directory under the OS tmpdir (os.tmpdir()/.npm-<rand>/setup.js), executes it via process.execPath with execFileSync, and removes the directory 5 seconds later to erase traces. The decoded payload collects hostname, username, home directory, cwd, platform, the full contents of process.env, and the output of the
env command, then transmits the data base64-wrapped in a GET query string to a hardcoded Telegram Bot API endpoint (api.telegram.org/bot<redacted>/sendMessage, chat_id 8969499041). Because process.env in CI/CD and developer environments routinely contains npm/GitHub/cloud credentials and deployment tokens, this constitutes credential theft against the installer.What should I do about MAL-2026-12092?
Remove the package from your dependencies and lockfiles, then rotate any secrets on machines where it was installed.