MAL-2026-4490 Malicious code in auth0-templates-scripts-utils (npm)

Package name impersonates the Auth0 ecosystem. Its postinstall hook (node index.js) runs unconditionally on npm install and performs a multi-stage data theft against the installer: (1) collects hostname, username, architecture, cwd, local IPs, /etc/resolv.conf,.git HEAD, UID/GID, the host project's package.json (name/version/repo) by walking parent directories, local and home .npmrc registry/scope settings, ~40 CI/CD environment variables (GITHUB_, GITLAB_, BITBUCKET_*, AWS CodeBuild, Vercel, etc.), and presence flags for ~/.ssh, ~/.aws, ~/.kube, ~/.docker, ~/.npm, ~/.gitconfig, ~/.cargo, ~/.ngrok; (2) when running in cloud, queries the instance metadata service at decimal-encoded 169.254.169.254 (2852039166) to extract live AWS IMDSv2 STS tokens, Azure IMDS OAuth tokens, and GCP service-account access tokens, including a 40-character prefix of each token in the payload; (3) DNS-probes ~30 internal-only hostnames (kubernetes.default.svc.cluster.local, vault.internal, consul.service.consul, gitlab.internal, jenkins.internal, ec2.internal, azure.internal, rancher.internal, etc.) to map the victim's internal infrastructure for lateral movement. The exfiltration destination dep-update-ci-02.lapxa354.workers.dev is base64-cloaked (Buffer.from("ZGVwLXVwZGF0ZS1jaS0wMi5sYXB4YTM1NC53b3JrZXJzLmRldg==","base64").toString()) and the data is sent in fragmented chunks via https.get with a 60-second delay as evasion. Code at index.js trims its own -utils suffix to derive an inferred host-project name and reports the host project rather than itself, confirming intent as a supply-chain delivery vehicle. User-Agent is MalekAbuLialaResearch/1.0.

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.