MAL-2026-13774 Malicious code in augustdigital-sdk (npm)

augustdigital-sdk is a malicious npm package — an unscoped brand-hijack of the legitimate, actively-maintained scoped package @augustdigital/sdk. Version 8.20.1 was copied verbatim from the genuine @augustdigital/[email protected] release (published ~2 hours earlier) to masquerade as a legitimate mirror or re-release. It is one of three packages — with augustdigital-sdk, upshift-finance and upshift-config — published as first-ever releases from the sole freemail npm account awugochogabriel ([email protected]) within ~20 seconds of each other on 2026-08-10, an account with no relationship to August Digital's real corporate maintainers.

The package body is a byte-identical repack of the genuine SDK (316 files; the shipped README even instructs users to npm install @augustdigital/sdk) with a single unconditional postinstall hook grafted onto the manifest. On npm install the hook runs an inline node -e script that issues an HTTPS GET to https://build-metrics-collector.cdn-ops-health.workers.dev/npm-install/ carrying os.hostname(), os.userInfo().username, process.cwd(), the package name/version and an ISO timestamp, wrapped in try/catch so failures are silent. The endpoint is a Cloudflare Workers subdomain deliberately named to impersonate build/CDN health infrastructure and is disclosed nowhere in the README, package.json or LICENSE, with no opt-out. Analysis of the bundled lib/ found only legitimate chain RPC/explorer endpoints and no second stage or credential-reading code; the injected postinstall beacon is the sole malicious behavior. Hosts that installed it have leaked their hostname, username and working-directory path to the attacker and should treat that data as disclosed.

package.json declares a postinstall script that runs an inline node -e invoking https.get against https://build-metrics-collector.cdn-ops-health.workers.dev/npm-install/ with a URL-encoded JSON payload containing os.hostname(), os.userInfo().username, process.cwd(), and the package name/version/timestamp. The destination is a generic Cloudflare Workers subdomain unrelated to the package's declared publisher (augustdigital.io / fractalprotocol.org). Errors are swallowed so the beacon is silent. Host and user identifiers are transmitted to a non-publisher endpoint automatically on npm install, without disclosure or opt-out.