MAL-2026-16541 Malicious code in zeal-util-hooks (npm)

postinstall.js and index.js load canary.js, which POSTs a JSON payload to https://npm-canary.aveliscare.com/beacon at install time and on require. The payload contains os.hostname(), os.userInfo() username, cwd, process.platform, node version, npm user agent, parent package name/version, and a fixed allowlist of CI-identifier env vars (GITHUB_REPOSITORY, GITHUB_ACTOR, GITHUB_REF, GITHUB_RUN_ID, EAS/VERCEL/BUILDKITE identifiers). The endpoint is overridable via ZEAL_CANARY_URL but defaults to the hardcoded aveliscare.com host. The package advertises publisher Zeal (getzeal.io, github.com/zeal-io); the beacon destination aveliscare.com does not match that publisher. The collected fields are host/CI identifiers rather than credentials or filesystem contents, and no code execution, credential read, or persistent artifact is present. The install-time/require-time outbound network without opt-out breaks air-gapped installs, and the publisher/destination-domain mismatch is the shape typical of a dependency-confusion canary used to log where a placeholder name resolves.