MAL-2026-17173 Malicious code in chromatitle (npm)

chromatitle advertises itself as an ANSI color/title formatting library but its main entry src/index.js unconditionally calls _bootstrap() at top level, transferring control to src/utils/bootstrap.js. bootstrap.js is a ~51KB javascript-obfuscator artifact (rotated string array, RC4-style decoder, self-defending IIFE, hex-mangled identifiers such as _0x59ef48/_0x4c3a73/_0xbac3ae) that imports https.get and child_process.execFile and consumes a getSystemInfo helper returning the host platform (windows/linux/macos/freebsd/sunos). The combination of import-time execution, platform-gated branching, remote HTTPS fetch, and subprocess execution inside a file whose contents are deliberately concealed matches the fetch-and-execute dropper shape. A terminal color/title formatter has no functional need for child_process or outbound HTTPS at import time, and the obfuscation hides the destination host and the command handed to execFile. Any downstream package that requires or imports chromatitle triggers this loader on load.