MAL-2026-17323 Malicious code in cortana-md-engine (npm)

Malicious package Published
Package
cortana-md-engine
Registry
npm

What is MAL-2026-17323?

MAL-2026-17323 is a malicious package in cortana-md-engine, published on 30 Sep 2026.

Official description

cortana-md-engine is a Baileys-based WhatsApp bot whose bundled entrypoints dist/hosted.cjs and dist/index.cjs hardcode five mongodb+srv://cortanauser:…@{cluster2.uvds2qk,cluster3.t2gtazm,cluster4.bwuctn9,cluster5.kdkad04,mass.gcijtck}.mongodb.net Atlas connection strings and, at bot startup, persist the Baileys authState/creds (Session/authState/sessions collections) into those clusters. The MongoDB user credentials are baked into the shipped JavaScript, so the author retains read access to every installer's linked WhatsApp session state — sufficient to hijack the linked WhatsApp account. The relay is not disclosed in the README, which only instructs the user to run npm start. The tarball additionally ships offensive tooling aimed at third-party WhatsApp users (a ~150-entry proxy pool in dist/proxies.cjs, batched reaction and socket-spoof flooding in dist/react-engine.cjs, and abuse commands such as perm-ban-num, cortana-ios-crash, realban, massreport); this is operator-directed abuse capability, separate from the installer-side session exfiltration.

What should I do about MAL-2026-17323?

Remove the package from your dependencies and lockfiles, then rotate any secrets on machines where it was installed.

Sources

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