Malicious code in markscan (npm)
The markscan package was published to the npm registry by user 'jonothhu' (maintainer email [email protected]) as one of 19 packages in a dependency-confusion campaign targeting the 'markscan', 'akrai', and 'iphouse' namespaces, published in both unscoped and scoped (@scope/name) forms so that a misconfigured resolver installs the public lookalike instead of an intended private/internal dependency. Each package self-describes as an 'AUTHORIZED SECURITY RESEARCH CANARY' (static token PATHC-CANARY-2026, contact [email protected]), but ships an unconsented install-time beacon and provides no legitimate functionality.
The package declares a postinstall hook ("node postinstall.js") that executes automatically on npm install. The bundled postinstall.js collects host reconnaissance - the package/canary name, the static token 'PATHC-CANARY-2026', an event label, a UTC timestamp, the Node.js version, the current working directory, the platform, and os.hostname() - and exfiltrates it via HTTPS POST to a hardcoded anonymous dead-drop at https://webhook.site/129cb2ee-ba08-4b3c-989c-270dc0030350 (the same collector across all 19 packages). Request errors are swallowed.
The self-attestation of 'authorized security research' present in the package metadata is unverifiable and does not change the disposition: the package performs unconsented telemetry collection and exfiltration at install time to an anonymous collector, matching the behavior of a dependency-confusion reconnaissance beacon. Install-time behavior and the shared collector endpoint were confirmed by static analysis of a sample spanning all three namespaces and both scoped and unscoped variants.
Source: amazon-inspector
postinstall.js runs unconditionally on npm install and POSTs a JSON payload containing the installer's hostname, current working directory, platform, Node.js version, and a timestamp to a hardcoded webhook.site collector (https://webhook.site/129cb2ee-ba08-4b3c-989c-270dc0030350). The payload also carries a static token string ('PATHC-CANARY-2026'). The package's self-description as an 'authorized research canary' does not constitute installer consent — installers of markscan have not opted into the beacon, and host identifiers are transmitted to an author-controlled endpoint at install time.
