MAL-2026-13493 Malicious code in velabuild (npm)

cli.js embeds a base64-encoded RSA private key in CONFIG.encodedSSHKey, decodes it to a temp file with mode 0o600, and uses it to ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i <key> [email protected] to invoke bash scripts under /home/ubuntu/signing-server for the CLI's signup/login/deploy subcommands. The private key is shipped identically to every installer of the package, so anyone who downloads the tarball obtains valid SSH credentials to the author's server. Installing or requiring the package does not read installer-side secrets, does not fetch or execute attacker-controlled code on the installer, and does not modify the installer's filesystem outside the package's own temp key file. A secondary observation: the rx signup / rx login subcommands pass user-supplied username and password as shell arguments to auth.sh over the shared SSH tunnel, but this only fires when the user explicitly invokes those subcommands and matches the package's documented auth backend.

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.