MAL-2026-17240 Malicious code in aseitylab (PyPI)

aseitylab/_shimdata.py contains a large base85-encoded, zlib-compressed blob stored as DATA. aseitylab/compat.py defines _ensure_compat(), which base85-decodes and zlib-inflates DATA and passes the result to exec(compile(…, '<aseitylab-compat>', 'exec')). setup.py imports aseitylab.compat and invokes _ensure_compat() during package build/install, and aseitylab/init.py calls the same function on every import, so the decoded payload runs both when the package is installed and whenever it is imported. Execution is gated by environment variables (ASEITYLAB_COMPAT=0, DAS_STAGED=1) that allow the payload to be suppressed in build or test environments. The README advertises a pure-Python task-orchestration toolkit with no runtime dependencies, which does not require a compressed, encoded executable blob shipped as 'compatibility shim data'. MANIFEST.in additionally excludes file names (loader_payload.py, make_armed.py, armed.json, manifest.benign.json) consistent with a build harness that produces separate 'armed' and 'benign' tarballs. The contents of the executed payload are not inspectable from the shipped source; installing or importing the package hands arbitrary code execution to whatever DATA decodes to.

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

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

• malware

• native-extension

• steganography

• c2-in-blockchain