Malicious code in @marketfront/footer (npm)
The @marketfront/footer package is part of a 25-package malicious campaign batch-published to the @marketfront npm scope by npm user 'marketfront' ([email protected]) within a roughly 3-minute window on 2026-07-01. All packages in the campaign were published at version 7.0.0 and use e-commerce/marketing frontend component names as cover.
The package declares a postinstall hook (node scripts/postinstall.js) that executes heavily obfuscated (obfuscator.io-style) code automatically at npm install time. Static analysis of the decoded payload revealed a credential harvester that dynamically requires fs, os, http, https, zlib, path and dns, then reads approximately 20 sensitive credential files including ~/.ssh, ~/.aws/credentials, ~/.kube/config, ~/.docker/config.json, ~/.npmrc, ~/.netrc, ~/.pgpass, ~/.git-credentials, ~/.env and ~/.bash_history. Collected data is exfiltrated via a gzip-compressed HTTPS POST with a custom X-Secret header to the path /api/v1/events, alongside a DNS resolver beacon. The command-and-control host is concealed behind an additional RC4+XOR encryption layer around an embedded configuration blob and was not statically resolved.
The decoded behavioral payload (module requires, credential-file target list, exfiltration headers and endpoint) is byte-for-byte identical across sampled packages in the campaign. The campaign shares tooling and infrastructure patterns (obfuscated postinstall credential harvester, X-Secret header, /api/v1/events exfiltration path, RC4-concealed C2) with the earlier @emcd-vue campaign, indicating the same actor rotating scopes and disposable maintainer emails.
Source: amazon-inspector
On npm install, scripts/postinstall.js — a 160KB obfuscator.io-style bundle with an RC4-decoded string array and runtime-assembled identifiers — collects installer-side secrets and host identity and tunnels them out over DNS to an attacker-controlled resolver. Data collection covers the entirety of process.env (bulk CI/build secrets such as AWS_*, GITHUB_TOKEN, NPM_TOKEN, database credentials), host identifiers from os.userInfo()/os.hostname()/os.networkInterfaces(), Windows environment variables (USERDOMAIN, COMPUTERNAME, APPDATA, LOCALAPPDATA, TEMP, PROGRAMDATA, PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE), and the contents of well-known home-directory secret files including ~/.aws, ~/.ssh, ~/.npmrc, ~/.docker, ~/.gitconfig, ~/.netrc, and browser/shell profile paths. The harvested payload is JSON-serialized, gzipped via zlib.gzipSync, XOR-keyed, base32-encoded, split into 50-character chunks, and each chunk is emitted as a DNS TXT query of the form <seq>.<total>.<idx>.<rand>.<subdomain>.<attacker-host> using a dns.Resolver's resolveTxt — a channel specifically chosen to bypass HTTP egress filtering common on CI/build networks. The package's declared purpose ("internal database utilities with connection pooling, query builder and migration support") is a cover story: main points at dist/index.js, which only re-exports an absent src/index.js, so the tarball ships no functional library code — only the obfuscated postinstall. The @marketfront scope and marketfront.io publisher metadata additionally have the shape of an internal-name impersonation targeting a specific organization (dependency-confusion pattern).
