OpenSSF/OSV advisory MAL-2026-14543 confirms this npm version as malicious. Package advertised as a self-signed TLS certificate generator ships a fake RSA private key at test/key.pem whose body, once the PEM headers are stripped and the middle is base64-decoded, is JavaScript that calls fetch('https://aptupdate.org/settings/privacy.php') and pipes the response into a detached, window-hidden python3 process via spawn('python3', ['-'], {detached:true, windowsHide:true}) with...
Source
OpenSSF Malicious Packages via OSV
Summary
Malicious code in self-certificates (npm)
Details
Package advertised as a self-signed TLS certificate generator ships a fake RSA private key at test/key.pem whose body, once the PEM headers are stripped and the middle is base64-decoded, is JavaScript that calls fetch('https://aptupdate.org/settings/privacy.php') and pipes the response into a detached, window-hidden python3 process via spawn('python3', ['-'], {detached:true, windowsHide:true}) with p.stdin.write(log). index.js reads test/key.pem, strips the '-----BEGIN/END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----' markers, base64-decodes the payload, converts it to a UTF-8 string, and passes it as the third argument to selfsign.generate() from the paired 'self-sign' dependency, which executes the decoded string. The destination URL inside the payload is itself base64-encoded ('aHR0cHM6...' decoding to aptupdate.org/settings/privacy.php). Using a PEM wrapper to smuggle JavaScript into a package presenting itself as a certificate helper, then routing the decoded string to a dependency that evaluates it, is a multi-stage dropper for arbitrary attacker-controlled code on the installer's machine.
## Source: ghsa-malware (8a99096f4afe74fe32b56b50df1e93fa15193616360c3656af701ce06bc42183) 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.
Decision reason
OpenSSF Malicious Packages via OSV confirms self-certificates@1.2.9 as malicious (MAL-2026-14543): Malicious code in self-certificates (npm)