MAL-2026-17506

    Dashboard / Malicious Package / MAL-2026-17506

    MAL-2026-17506

    Published: 4 Oct 2026Last Modified: 4 Oct 2026

    Summary: Malicious code in hardhat-ftp (npm)

    Details: Source: amazon-inspector (5e916c23a0efbd49d3cfcd5993957df7afbade3f454925d0672acc8c9f68245c) The package's declared main entry index.js unconditionally requires./lib/config, a 4,499,968-byte obfuscator.io-packed file (26,234-entry string array, hex-renamed identifiers, control-flow flattening, top-level IIFE) that executes as soon as any consumer runs `require('hardhat-ftp')`. After string-array decoding the loader resolves to execSync and spawn sinks, and the package declares axios as a dependency, giving the import-time payload both outbound HTTP and local command-execution primitives with the concrete command targets concealed behind the obfuscation. The surrounding package is a cover: it is published under the name hardhat-ftp with a vulnerability-management description, but the README headers, badges, and ecosystem links are lifted from pinojs/pino, and the files under lib/ (proto.js, levels.js, transport.js, multistream.js) mirror the pino source tree. The name/README/code mismatch, the scale of the obfuscation, and the presence of exec+HTTP primitives inside the auto-loaded module match the masquerade-dropper pattern: installing or requiring this package triggers execution of concealed attacker-controlled code on the installer's host.

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name: hardhat-ftp

    Purl: pkg:npm/hardhat-ftp

    Affected ranges

    Type: N/A

    Events:

    Introduced- None
    Fixed -None

    Affected versions

    2.0.1