MAL-2026-16406 Malicious code in crypto-trader-py (PyPI)

The package presents itself as a crypto trading and backtesting toolkit, but ships no library code matching that description — SOURCES.txt lists only LICENSE, README, setup.py, and egg-info metadata, and top_level.txt is empty. setup.py unconditionally invokes _wus_boot() before setup() during pip install, which spawns a sibling script _cryptotr_b2ca69.py via subprocess.Popen using pythonw.exe with Windows creationflags 0x08000000 (CREATE_NO_WINDOW) to hide the console window, guarded by a tempdir lockfile (13f8811c38.lk) to avoid re-entry. Stealth markers (hidden-window flag, pythonw preference, silent try/except wrapping, obfuscated identifiers) and the absence of any advertised library content match a dropper cover-story pattern rather than a legitimate build step, and the child process runs on every install with no user interaction.

During installation, the package attempts to silently execute code. In analyzed versions, the payload file was missing.

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

Campaign: 2026-09-snap-queue

Reasons (based on the campaign):

• The package overrides the install command in setup.py to execute malicious code during installation.