MAL-2026-18110 Malicious code in facewareretargeter (PyPI)

facewareretargeter 9.9.9 ships a 2-line stub module and a setup.py whose install_requires declares a single dependency, tracer-batch-stream-chain, sourced from a direct https URL (https://artifacts.vacsdk.com/pypi/tracer_batch_stream_chain-9.9.9.tar.gz) rather than a PyPI version range. On pip install facewareretargeter, pip fetches that tarball from the non-PyPI host and executes its setup.py / build backend on the installer's machine, with no version pin, no hash, and no integrity check. The host is not a known Python index and is unrelated to any declared repository or homepage, so whoever controls artifacts.vacsdk.com can deliver arbitrary code to every installer at any time. The package name resembles a plausible internal/private tool and uses an implausibly high version (9.9.9), which is the dependency-confusion shape used to win resolution against an internal package.

The package uses fake http-downloaded dependencies to track downloads, and has no other purpose.

Category: PROBABLY_PENTEST - Packages looking like typical pentest packages, but also anything that looks like testing, exploring pre-prepared kits, research & co, with clearly low-harm possibilities.

Campaign: 2026-10-vacsdk

Reasons (based on the campaign):

• dependency-confusion