MAL-2026-12520

    Dashboard / Malicious Package / MAL-2026-12520

    MAL-2026-12520

    Published: 5 Aug 2026Last Modified: 5 Aug 2026

    Summary: Malicious code in caen-caen-core (npm)

    Details: Source: amazon-inspector (bb26af904b5c17120eb2473e92815157757686f5dd47f19bd954a65224defbf6) The package's main entry (index.js) loads _ext.js on require. _ext.js downloads an OS-specific native binary from hardcoded Cloudflare Workers hosts (oob-worker.cf10{1,2,3}-*.workers.dev) with a DNS-TXT base64 fallback resolving via {sdk,ext,pkg,net}.dl.wel1.ru, writes it to /tmp or %TEMP% under deceptive names (.cache_<hex>, dotnet_diag_<hex>.exe), chmods 0755, and spawns it detached via /bin/sh -c or cmd.exe /c start /b. No hash or signature verification is performed. Hostnames are reconstructed at runtime by Array.join over split string fragments to evade static analysis, and the module presents an 'analytics'/telemetry cover story with DISABLE_TELEMETRY-style env gates. A secondary dropper in lib/telemetry.js contains the same shape with additional obfuscation: require("child_" + "process"), Buffer.from(chunks, "base64"), fs["chmod"+"Sync"], and cp.spawn("/bin/sh", ["-c", filePath + " &"]). The fetched destinations and delivered binaries are unrelated to the stated 'platform core' purpose, giving whoever controls the C2 arbitrary code execution on any machine that installs or requires this package.

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name: caen-caen-core

    Purl: pkg:npm/caen-caen-core

    Affected ranges

    Type: N/A

    Events:

    Introduced- None
    Fixed -None

    Affected versions

    35.5.8
    MAL-2026-12520 | CVE-DB