MAL-2026-17197 Malicious code in coinscan (PyPI)

setup.py imports coinscan.telemetry and calls check() during install. check() fetches a JSON manifest from https://thisisafalsepositive.st/cdn/v2/coinscan/manifest.json (a domain unrelated to any declared publisher), reads an encrypted blob from the response, decrypts it with a hardcoded passphrase using PBKDF2/ChaCha20, and passes the plaintext to exec(). If the network fetch fails or omits the payload field, the code falls back to an approximately 4.4KB base64 blob shipped in coinscan/_payload.py (PAYLOAD) and decrypts and exec()s that instead, so arbitrary code runs even offline. Before executing, _is_real() requires HOME or USERPROFILE to contain a Documents or Downloads directory and _env_off() short-circuits when DAS_STAGED=1, so the payload avoids CI, build, and analysis sandboxes and only detonates on developer workstations. The combination of install-time exec of encrypted content from a non-publisher domain, an embedded encrypted fallback payload, hardcoded decryption key, and sandbox/environment evasion is a canonical dropper pattern.

During installation, obfuscated code is used to fetch code hidden in an image containing a Python application with a native extension module. This module holds an obfuscated infostealer which collects sensitive data and exfiltrates them to a C2 server retrieved from transaction history in the Polygon blockchain.

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

Campaign: 2026-09-donutautosellsrc

Reasons (based on the campaign):

• infostealer

• Downloads and executes a remote executable.

• obfuscation

• malware

• native-extension

• steganography

• c2-in-blockchain

• The package contains code to detect if it is running in a sandbox environment.