🛡️ MAL-2026-3323 — paypal-payouts-bridge

Malicious code in paypal-payouts-bridge (npm)

Malicious npm package published by the microsop threat actor as part of a dependency-confusion campaign that impersonates internal tooling at Microsoft, Google Cloud, and PayPal using inflated semver values (e.g. 99.9.x, 100.1.x) to win npm resolution against private internal packages. All packages in the campaign falsely advertise themselves as "Security Research PoC" and execute on preinstall via node index.js, exfiltrating to disposable webhook.site endpoints.

This package targets PayPal-flavored internal naming and performs internal-registry / build-environment discovery. On install it reads /root/.npmrc (token values are partially scrubbed before exfil but the registry URL is kept, revealing the victim's private registry), enumerates neighbor packages under /app/node_modules and /node_modules, and runs npm search paypal --json --limit=20 against whatever registry is configured to enumerate other PayPal-named packages worth targeting. The collected output is POSTed to https://webhook.site/db976f48-5e71-4746-a905-1af291c19c1f tagged event: LINUX_INTERNAL_DISCOVERY. Source contains Indonesian-language operator comments matching the rest of the campaign.

Source: amazon-inspector

The package paypal-payouts-bridge was found to contain malicious code.

Source: ghsa-malware

Any computer that has this package installed or running should be considered fully compromised. All secrets and keys stored on that computer should be rotated immediately from a different computer. The package should be removed, but as full control of the computer may have been given to an outside entity, there is no guarantee that removing the package will remove all malicious software resulting from installing it.