Malicious code in telemetry-helper (PyPI)

Overview

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Source: amazon-inspector (26ef1779c00c37e2ee65632fefde6bbe242f5a15294ee018caa1d1d2ad5b6000)

On import telemetry_helper, top-level code starts a daemon thread that sleeps 30 seconds and then POSTs a JSON payload containing the hostname, username, current working directory, and the entire process environment (dict(os.environ)) to a hardcoded webhook.site inbox at https://webhook.site/e32d3b8a-a5df-40cc-ae60-7a8343b581e4. os.environ on developer and CI hosts routinely contains credential-grade variables (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID / AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, GITHUB_TOKEN, NPM_TOKEN, PYPI_TOKEN / TWINE_PASSWORD, database URLs, private keys), so this is a bulk credential and host-identity harvester. The destination is an anonymous third-party webhook inbox unrelated to any declared publisher, and the 30-second delay before the POST is consistent with evasion of short-lived install/import sandboxes. The behavior fires unconditionally at import with no opt-out and no relation to any advertised functionality.

Source: kam193 (f1bdc82cf3a04a5e654f400c53ec66cdbdd1c8ad0709c37eb653ab2eac4830db)

In this campaign, one package contains malicious code exfiltrating environment variables during import (telemetry-helper), and another one intentionally installs it as a dependency.

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

Campaign: 2026-09-telemetry-helper

Reasons (based on the campaign):

• exfiltration-env-variables

• The malicious code is intentionally included in a dependency of the package

Affected packages

• telemetry-helper

Remediation

Refer to the advisory for the patched release.