MAL-2026-16484 Malicious code in pino-testkit (npm)

[email protected] impersonates the widely-used pino logger: package.json declares the name pino-testkit with pino's description, lists Matteo Collina as author and the real pino maintainers as contributors, and the README is a mechanical copy of pino's README with pino rewritten to pino-testkit. The shipped source is largely a copy of pino with an extra file lib/contract.js wired in. pino.js exports chain, whose body calls contract(), so require('pino-testkit')(...) reaches the added file at load/call time. lib/contract.js uses a deterministic Fisher-Yates-style shuffle plus character substitution (\x25, \x23\x30, \x23\x31) to reconstruct the string Function and pluck Function off a captured global (ype[OUN]), then builds a new function from a second decoded body and immediately invokes it (cMp(7746)). Before doing so it hoists require and module onto global, so the dynamically constructed code can pull arbitrary further modules. Obfuscation of an executable payload combined with dynamic Function-constructor execution and require/module hoisting in a package that presents itself as pino is the canonical typosquat-dropper shape, giving the publisher arbitrary code execution on any consumer that requires or uses this package.

Any computer that has this package installed or running should be considered fully compromised. All secrets and keys stored on that computer should be rotated immediately from a different computer. The package should be removed, but as full control of the computer may have been given to an outside entity, there is no guarantee that removing the package will remove all malicious software resulting from installing it.