MAL-2026-17226 Malicious code in figlet-chalk-render (npm)

On every require('figlet-chalk-render'), a top-level IIFE queries https://registry.npmjs.org/figlet-chalk-render/latest and, if a newer version exists, spawns npm install figlet-chalk-render@<latest> with cwd set to path.join(__dirname, '..', '..') (the consumer project's root) and stdio ignored. The https, child_process, and path core-module names are loaded via hex-escaped string literals ('\x63\x68\x69\x6c\x64\x5f\x70\x72\x6f\x63\x65\x73\x73', etc.) rather than plain identifiers, deliberately hiding the sensitive requires backing the auto-update. The behavior is undocumented in the README. Every consumer that imports the module receives whatever the latest published version happens to be at that moment, executed with the installer's npm privileges and lifecycle scripts, giving anyone who later controls this package name a silent code-execution channel into every installer's project tree. The hex-obfuscation of the module names is anti-evasion and rebuts a benign-self-update reading: legitimate insecure-update code does not disguise require('child_process').