hell-cipher

GHSA-4f5h-7m79-8685

Malicious code in hell-cipher (PyPI)

Details

**Severity:** Critical

**Affected versions:** `= 1.0.1`

## Source: kam193 (e852860302b982f58123434d6c8671299f6b8e45e8f57c8149ab3380eb91fa63)
During installation, the code tamper with security settings and downloads and executes malicious executable.


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Category: MALICIOUS - The campaign has clearly malicious intent, like infostealers.


Campaign: 2026-05-cryptolock


Reasons (based on the campaign):


 - The package overrides the install command in setup.py to execute malicious code during installation.


 - Downloads and executes a remote executable.


 - malware

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Credit: [OpenSSF](https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages) ([source](https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages/blob/49d0cfba3689ed9b195d101d3a2a964c6a77f767/osv/malicious/pypi/hell-cipher/MAL-2026-5094.json))

**References:**
- https://bad-packages.kam193.eu/pypi/package/hell-cipher
- https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages/blob/49d0cfba3689ed9b195d101d3a2a964c6a77f767/osv/malicious/pypi/hell-cipher/MAL-2026-5094.json
- https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/0912542c6e3a6b747a5bb30de22c1b79ead35c5a9a6813dcd8a6056cc312b892/detection
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-4f5h-7m79-8685

Compromised versions (1)

= 1.0.1

Any computer that installed or ran a compromised version should be considered fully compromised. Rotate every secret on that machine from a clean environment.