MAL-2026-15829 Malicious code in telemetry-helper (PyPI)

On import telemetry_helper, top-level code starts a daemon thread that sleeps 30 seconds and then POSTs a JSON payload containing the hostname, username, current working directory, and the entire process environment (dict(os.environ)) to a hardcoded webhook.site inbox at https://webhook.site/e32d3b8a-a5df-40cc-ae60-7a8343b581e4. os.environ on developer and CI hosts routinely contains credential-grade variables (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID / AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, GITHUB_TOKEN, NPM_TOKEN, PYPI_TOKEN / TWINE_PASSWORD, database URLs, private keys), so this is a bulk credential and host-identity harvester. The destination is an anonymous third-party webhook inbox unrelated to any declared publisher, and the 30-second delay before the POST is consistent with evasion of short-lived install/import sandboxes. The behavior fires unconditionally at import with no opt-out and no relation to any advertised functionality.

In this campaign, one package contains malicious code exfiltrating environment variables during import (telemetry-helper), and another one intentionally installs it as a dependency.

Category: MALICIOUS - The campaign has clearly malicious intent, like infostealers.

Campaign: 2026-09-telemetry-helper

Reasons (based on the campaign):

• exfiltration-env-variables

• The malicious code is intentionally included in a dependency of the package