MAL-2026-14194 Malicious code in system-performance-helper (npm)

Package advertises itself as a system performance monitoring helper, but its package.json declares a postinstall hook (node install.js) that opens a TCP socket and pipes a spawned OS shell (/bin/sh on Unix, cmd.exe on Windows) stdin/stdout/stderr through it, with auto-reconnect and a keep-alive interval — a canonical reverse-shell backdoor executed automatically on npm install. Bytes received from the remote peer are written directly into the shell, yielding full remote code execution on the installer's host. The destination is hardcoded as HOST="YOUR_PUBLIC_IP", PORT=4444, so as-published the connect() fails DNS resolution and no callback occurs; the payload itself is fully functional and any republish with the placeholder filled in weaponizes every install. The visible exports in index.js (getLoad, getTotalMemory wrapping os.loadavg/os.totalmem) are a cover story; install.js contains // Run silently and // Fail quietly comments around the socket-to-shell pipe, and the advertised monitoring behavior is not present in the postinstall payload.