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Malicious code in time-utils-helper (npm)

Type: advisorySource: OSV1 source record

--- _-= Per source details. Do not edit below this line.=-_ ## Source: amazon-inspector (93cbd818e3b29b2b7c9da6f48b3d82baae1af9bd0fa637a2848749bdfea86084) The package advertises itself as a time-formatting utility (index.js exports formatDate/capitalize/truncate) but ships a postinstall.js lifecycle script that runs on npm install and performs unrelated cloud credential harvesting. postinstall.js uses child_process.exec to shell out to curl against multi-cloud instance metadata services (AWS 169.254.169.254, Aliyun 100.100.100.200, Tencent metadata.tencentyun.com, GCP metadata.google.internal, Azure), extracts AWS IAM security credentials for the instance role into /tmp/.iam-creds, and transmits hostname, user, and the IAM credential material as HTTP GET query-string parameters to the hardcoded Burp Collaborator subdomain pzs5w7ntzhsnepwk564lyfdci3oucl0a.oastify.com. The mismatch between the declared trivial utility purpose and the install-time cloud-metadata scraping identifies the package as a decoy delivery vehicle for credential theft.

Announced Source revision 1
Original source ↗

MAL-2026-12225

Primary source · Revision 1

Imported from structured advisory data. Source references identify upstream records or fields; verify affected versions and your deployed configuration.

Security context

Source reference: osv:MAL-2026-12225

time-utils-helper

Source reference: /affected/0/package/name

Affected versions
1.0.0

Source reference: /affected/0/versions

Fixed versions
Not stated in this record
Prerequisites
Not stated in this record

Structured affected-version data

Original package identities and version rules from this source.

[
  {
    "package": {
      "name": "time-utils-helper",
      "purl": "pkg:npm/time-utils-helper",
      "ecosystem": "npm"
    },
    "versions": [
      "1.0.0"
    ],
    "database_specific": {
      "cwes": [
        {
          "name": "Embedded Malicious Code",
          "cweId": "CWE-506",
          "description": "The product contains code that appears to be malicious in nature."
        }
      ],
      "source": "https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages/blob/main/osv/malicious/npm/time-utils-helper/MAL-2026-12225.json",
      "indicators": {
        "evidence_files": [
          {
            "path": "postinstall.js",
            "tlsh": "195112fcb93578333f1e8a94f3ad6a0a8593dc9f4bf4eb0054b61d280c0cd413665a66",
            "sha256": "cd9315d4631bfde5bfe82042b45105c9f42839f41b7b39261e4358957a5f9f3a"
          },
          {
            "path": "package.json",
            "tlsh": "afd02b248a1145333ad09ae55a574845bb654e2b03047c1d53e7100c43cfbf284fe31e",
            "sha256": "de1b57b46cb7c80a618bc22c8cc864ff477cd7a125fc9eff9d40c7a2eda1727d"
          }
        ],
        "package_integrity": [
          {
            "hashes": {
              "sha1": "f3ecb62dc9e05b4f3f2a85da4718eb0d90e7abab",
              "sha512_sri": "sha512-KtgvvxJiEmHLTr8ImC0l1gy3OpKgcESfppW+05PQhprh6ZbzFrmBa/tOrD7gVOi+Pb9kvAiR2yKLxse+bqJISg=="
            },
            "filename": "time-utils-helper-1.0.0.tgz"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
]

Publisher severity

No explicit severity was provided.

Event
#11007 · Revision 1
Added to Heist Feed
Publisher date
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