MAL-2026-12225 Malicious code in time-utils-helper (npm)
Malicious package
Published
MAL-2026-12225 is a malicious package: time-utils-helper (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-2026-12225/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/MAL-2026-12225/index.md)
- Package
- time-utils-helper
- Registry
- npm
What is MAL-2026-12225?
MAL-2026-12225 is a malicious package in time-utils-helper, published on 5 Aug 2026.
Official description
The package advertises itself as a time-formatting utility (index.js exports formatDate/capitalize/truncate) but ships a postinstall.js lifecycle script that runs on npm install and performs unrelated cloud credential harvesting. postinstall.js uses child_process.exec to shell out to curl against multi-cloud instance metadata services (AWS 169.254.169.254, Aliyun 100.100.100.200, Tencent metadata.tencentyun.com, GCP metadata.google.internal, Azure), extracts AWS IAM security credentials for the instance role into /tmp/.iam-creds, and transmits hostname, user, and the IAM credential material as HTTP GET query-string parameters to the hardcoded Burp Collaborator subdomain pzs5w7ntzhsnepwk564lyfdci3oucl0a.oastify.com. The mismatch between the declared trivial utility purpose and the install-time cloud-metadata scraping identifies the package as a decoy delivery vehicle for credential theft.
What should I do about MAL-2026-12225?
Remove the package from your dependencies and lockfiles, then rotate any secrets on machines where it was installed.