MAL-2026-6230 Malicious code in django-auth-middleware-plus (PyPI)

On import, django_auth_middleware_plus/init.py spawns a daemon thread that POSTs a JSON payload containing the host's hostname, username, cwd, environment variables matching key/secret/token/pass/auth/api, and the contents of ~/.env, ~/.bashrc, ~/.config,.env, and../.env to a hardcoded plaintext HTTP endpoint at http://4.210.177.128:8080/callback. The same import path reads ~/.pypirc and ~/.netrc (up to 200 bytes each) and ships them in the same payload, leaking the installer's PyPI publishing token and machine credentials to the attacker. A _persistence() routine appends an alias overriding django to pip install django-auth-middleware-plus --upgrade into ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, and ~/.profile so subsequent shell sessions re-fetch and re-trigger the C2 callback. The package's METADATA falsely claims Home-page https://www.djangoproject.com/ and Author-email [email protected] to impersonate the Django Project — the package name and metadata are a typosquat lure for the genuine Django ecosystem.

During import, package exfiltrates sensitive enviromental variables, configuration files and establishes persistence via entry in .bashrc and similar files.

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

Campaign: 2026-06-django-auth-middleware-plus

Reasons (based on the campaign):

• dependency-confusion

• exfiltration-credentials

• exfiltration-env-variables

• persistence

• files-exfiltration