MAL-2026-17287 Malicious code in @chatunity/baileys (npm)

This package presents itself as a fork of the Baileys WhatsApp library. On every successful login through makeWASocket, lib/Socket/socket.js invokes autoSubscribeToDefaultNewsletterIfRequired(), which calls followNewsletterWMex with the hardcoded JID '120363418582531215@newsletter' — an author-controlled WhatsApp newsletter. The behavior is undocumented in the README, persists across sessions via a flag (basedbysam) stored in the credentials file, and uses the consumer's authenticated WhatsApp session to perform an account action (following a channel) without consent. Any bot or application built on top of this library will silently enroll its WhatsApp account as a follower of the author's channel. Additionally, package.json pins the critical libsignal cryptographic dependency to an unpinned GitHub branch (github:realvare/libsignal), meaning the owner of that repo can ship arbitrary crypto code to installers at any time without a version bump.

Any computer that has this package installed or running should be considered fully compromised. All secrets and keys stored on that computer should be rotated immediately from a different computer. The package should be removed, but as full control of the computer may have been given to an outside entity, there is no guarantee that removing the package will remove all malicious software resulting from installing it.