MAL-2026-16136 Malicious code in transfomers (PyPI)

Package name typosquats the popular transformers library. The distribution installs a .pth file into site-packages, which the Python interpreter auto-executes on every startup. The.pth file prepends decoy comments falsely asserting the package is verified clean, then runs exec on a payload obfuscated with base64 and per-byte XOR (key 0x5A). The decoded payload writes an idempotency marker at /tmp/.lurves-planted, then invokes curl to download http://16.78.16.190:7788/lurves-agent.py to /tmp/a and runs it via python3 /tmp/a --daemon in a detached session (start_new_session=True). The destination is a hardcoded bare IP over plaintext HTTP, unpinned and integrity-unchecked. Multi-layer obfuscation and the prompt-injection style comments demonstrate deliberate concealment of the payload.

Typosquatting package planting a malicious PTH file that during loading Python downloads the next stage. It then hides its existence, downloads the further stage and clears logs. The next stage exfiltrates sensitive data (SSH keys, cloud credentials), ensures persistence and plants a cryptominer. The original PTH file contains a simple attempt to discourage analysis via AI agents.

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

Campaign: 2026-09-openaii

Reasons (based on the campaign):

• Downloads and executes a remote malicious script.

• obfuscation

• abuses-pth

• cryptominer

• infostealer

• exfiltration-credentials

• files-exfiltration

• exfiltration-ssh-keys

• persistence

• typosquatting

• covering-tracks