MAL-2026-17325

    Dashboard / Malicious Package / MAL-2026-17325

    MAL-2026-17325

    Published: 30 Sept 2026Last Modified: 30 Sept 2026

    Summary: Malicious code in cleanup-string (PyPI)

    Details: Source: amazon-inspector (844c5afa9f00c02149f4f6314447c5738e04ed419014809c1df83f31aa012525) The package advertises itself as a pure-Python string helper (strip, slugify, case conversion, whitespace collapse) and its README states the implementation is standard-library only. However, `cleanup_string/__init__.py` performs `from._impl import cleanup`, which loads a 1.3 MB Windows-only native extension `cleanup_string/_impl.cp313-win_amd64.vmp.pyd` (sha256 980ae204f04f9a7e68666670eb5b236bc7347d0111697df1015de665fd1a1712). The filename embeds the VMProtect convention `.vmp` and the binary matches that packer's signature: the only readable strings are Win32 API imports (LoadLibraryA, GetModuleHandleA, HeapAlloc, DisableThreadLibraryCalls, ExitProcess, KERNEL32.dll, VCRUNTIME140.dll) and the remaining ~1.3 MB is high-entropy virtualized code. VMProtect exists to defeat static and dynamic analysis; the trivial advertised functionality has no legitimate need for a virtualized native module. Any Windows Python 3.13 environment that imports `cleanup_string` executes this opaque, anti-analysis-protected code with the privileges of the importing process.

    References: https://pypi.org/project/cleanup-string/1.0.0/

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name: cleanup-string

    Purl: pkg:pypi/cleanup-string

    Affected ranges

    Type: N/A

    Events:

    Introduced- None
    Fixed -None

    Affected versions

    1.0.0