🛡️ MAL-2026-10722 — agent-core

Malicious code in @whalent/agent-core (npm)

Source: amazon-inspector

The package's main/bin entry (dist/index.cjs) implements a remote agent that opens a WebSocket to a gateway configured via WHALENT_GATEWAY / WHALENT_TOKEN / WHALENT_PLATFORM_URL and, over that channel, drives local PTY sessions via node-pty, spawns shells against process.env.SHELL, bridges loopback services on 127.0.0.1:3389 (RDP) and 127.0.0.1:5900/5901 (VNC), and runs a Python Jupyter kernel sidecar (dist/jupyter_sidecar.py) that executes arbitrary NDJSON-delivered code cells. The remote party at the gateway therefore has interactive command and code execution on the installer's host, plus a channel to reach otherwise-loopback-bound RDP/VNC. The 13.6 MB dist/index.cjs is protected with obfuscator.io-style transforms — a rotated 105,426-entry string array, _0xNNNN identifier renaming, decoder wrappers, and control-flow flattening — hiding the gateway URLs, command dispatch, and upgrade logic from review. The bundle additionally contains an npmInstall code path plus WHALENT_NPM_REGISTRY and WHALENT_CORE_ENTRY environment configuration, and the README describes the package as one that is 'replaced by remote daemon upgrades', so the running agent can be instructed by the gateway to fetch and swap in a new version of @whalent/agent-core from a configurable registry, executing whatever code that fetched artifact contains. The net effect of installing and running this package is a persistent, remote-controlled RCE channel into the installer's machine with a self-update mechanism that can pull further code from a registry the remote party can influence.