MAL-2026-6568 Malicious code in express-mocha-test (npm)

[email protected] declares a postinstall lifecycle hook that loads the package's main module, which calls fetch() against an anonymous ngrok-free.app tunnel (https://2939e69fc408.ngrok-free.app/stats) and passes the response body directly to eval(). This executes attacker-controlled JavaScript on any machine that runs npm install for this package, with no pinning, integrity check, or scoping. The destination is an ephemeral, mutable, attacker-operated tunnel — not a registry, not a publisher domain. Package metadata impersonates well-known maintainers of the express and mocha projects (author field set to 'TJ Holowaychuk'), and the stated description ('Integrate redis with cookies') does not match the shipped behavior, indicating deliberate impersonation rather than misconfiguration.

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.

The OpenSSF Package Analysis project identified 'express-mocha-test' @ 0.0.1 (npm) as malicious.

It is considered malicious because:

• The package communicates with a domain associated with malicious activity.