MAL-2026-16383 Malicious code in mxdriver (npm)

The npm package [email protected] ships obfuscator.io-style string-array-obfuscated preinstall and postinstall scripts (scripts/preinstall.js, scripts/postinstall.js). On npm install, the decoded scripts fetch remote content from api.imghippo.com (an anonymous third-party image host, e.g. https://api.imghippo.com/files/hOG8244hc.png) and a second URL under www.image.com/, write the bytes into the package directory as gldriver_pre_asset.exe and gldriver_pre_core.exe, then invoke a platform-specific opener against the.exe path via child_process.exec (mspaint "..." on win32, open "..." on darwin, xdg-open "..." on linux), and delete the files. The README frames the package as a Google APIs wrapper, which does not correspond to downloading and opening.exe files at install time. The delivery source is mutable and non-publisher, no hash or signature is verified, the destination filename is an executable extension, and the URLs, filenames, and shell commands are all hidden behind a rotated string-array accessor (_0x5c7e) — a classic install-time dropper pattern whose payload can be swapped at any time by whoever controls the imghippo asset.