MAL-2026-5304 Malicious code in rsquests (PyPI)

The package name rsquests is a single-character insertion typo of the top-100 PyPI package requests. Package metadata and source are a verbatim copy of upstream requests: rsquests/__version__.py sets __title__ = "requests", METADATA lists Author-email: Kenneth Reitz <[email protected]>, and top_level.txt declares the top-level package as requests (so import requests after installing rsquests resolves to this package's bundled copy, shadowing the real upstream if it isn't installed). The full public API (get/post/put/delete/Session/…) is replicated, so a developer who mistypes pip install requests as pip install rsquests gets working behavior and may not notice the substitution. No exfiltration, RCE, dropper, credential harvest, or silent-relay payload is present in this version — the install-time and import-time code paths match the upstream library. The risk is name-confusion plus future-version risk: the squatted name normalizes the typo and provides a vector if a later release introduces a malicious payload. Routing to human review per typosquat-without-payload policy — name-similarity is a subjective signal and the absence of a current payload means this does not meet the bar for an automated block.

Typosquatting package published from a compromised account with an obfuscated infostealer. The infostealer is a heavily obfuscated JavaScript code executed using Bun runtime on Python startup. It collectes all kinds of sensitive data, including API keys, credentials to package repositories, cryptocurrency assets, password manager data. Infostealer actively queries online services to collect additional secrets as well as attempts to gain persistence and spread further by publishing infected packages using collected credentials. Data are exfiltrated likely using Github. The code seems to threaten to wipe the user's data if it detects invalid GitHub tokens. Cleanup should be done with caution.

It seems to be related to the recent Mini Shai Hulud campaign.

Category: MALICIOUS - The campaign has clearly malicious intent, like infostealers.

Campaign: 2026-06-compr-woodpecker

Reasons (based on the campaign):

• compromised-package

• exfiltration-env-variables

• exfiltration-cloud-tokens

• exfiltration-credentials

• abuses-pth

• obfuscation

• infostealer

• The package contains code to detect if it is running in a sandbox environment.

• exfiltration-crypto

• files-exfiltration

• destructive-actions