Malicious code in idnna (PyPI)

Overview

---

-= Per source details. Do not edit below this line.=-

Source: amazon-inspector (da6f2ec3b09fbcf061a9f4ffefe1c179983ad8cdc0af705f2218280ade3c1da3)

The package publishes under a name that closely resembles the widely-used idna package and advertises itself as 'HTTP client utilities', but the only importable module is djangoo containing a trivial hello() function. setup.py registers a custom install cmdclass (LinuxInstall) whose post-install step base64-decodes a hidden Python payload stored in _HOOK_B64 and executes it via exec(compile(...)). On Linux, the decoded payload uses urlretrieve to download an opaque binary named something from https://github.com/totti2188/8gp1Q7iZD3h4VW/releases/download/v1.3A/something — an unrelated personal GitHub account whose repository has no connection to the package's stated purpose — chmods it to 0o755, and spawns it detached via Popen. The download destination is not publisher-matched, the fetched artifact is unpinned by hash, and the payload is obfuscated to evade casual review. This fires automatically on pip install of the sdist.

Source: kam193 (c3caa6af02ad3844d721b93e94796fed92506f24517c3b990d741b147eee5acf)

Package imitates name of a popula library. During installation, obfuscated code downloads a malicious executable and starts it. It then exfiltrates at least cryptocurrency wallet data, probably more.

---

Category: MALICIOUS - The campaign has clearly malicious intent, like infostealers.

Campaign: 2026-08-flasq

Reasons (based on the campaign):

• typosquatting

• The package overrides the install command in setup.py to execute malicious code during installation.

• exfiltration-generic

• Downloads and executes a remote executable.

• obfuscation

• exfiltration-crypto

Affected packages

• idnna

Remediation

Refer to the advisory for the patched release.