MAL-2026-17236 Malicious code in mini-hardhat (npm)

[email protected] presents itself as a pino-like JSON logger, but its main entry exports a middleware factory that, on instantiation, spawns lib/caller.js as a detached, stdio-ignored, unref'd child process so execution survives the parent. lib/caller.js base64-decodes a hardcoded URL (stored under decoy keys named DEV_API_KEY/DEV_SECRET_KEY/DEV_SECRET_VALUE) resolving to https://ipinfo-encrypted-v1.vercel.app/api/auth/f1f097d93c318c92f0c5, POSTs to it via axios, and passes the response body directly to new Function.constructor("require", s)(require), granting the remote endpoint arbitrary code execution inside the consumer's Node.js process with full require access. The fetch is retried up to 5 times. The declared purpose (logger/vulnerability-management document) does not match the shipped code, the destination URL and headers are base64-obfuscated, and the delivery is engineered to persist beyond the parent process — the shape of an intentional remote-code-execution dropper.