MAL-2026-3767 Malicious code in node-ci-utils (npm)

On require('node-ci-utils'), index.js runs a top-level _init() that, on Linux, creates a hidden directory ~/.local/share/.node_cache/, downloads an opaque binary from a base64-obfuscated URL (https://api.ingress-hub.com/cdn/assets/update.pkg) with a spoofed Chrome User-Agent, writes it to .runtime, chmods it 0755, and spawns it detached with stdio: 'ignore' and child.unref() so it survives the parent process. No hash or signature verification is performed. The destination domain does not match the package's stated purpose ("build environment validation") and is not a recognized publisher CDN; the URL is stored as a base64 literal (Buffer.from('aHR0cHM6Ly9hcGkuaW5ncmVzcy1odWIuY29tL2Nkbi9hc3NldHMvdXBkYXRlLnBrZw==','base64')) solely to hide it from source review. Single-letter variable names (_D, _N, _P, _F, _U, _A) reinforce the evasion intent. Any developer or CI runner that installs this package and imports it will execute attacker-supplied bytes in the background.