staking-apr-fetcher

GHSA-5wxm-jv9m-mw2r

Malicious code in staking-apr-fetcher (RubyGems)

Details

**Severity:** Critical

**Affected versions:** `= 0.9.1`

## Source: amazon-inspector (405ab5b9651b8e8817ae91290042ec22673c5c99c1b58f45747e47cbb85aeacf)
The gem declares a native extension whose build script (extconf.rb) decodes a base64-embedded Ruby payload and executes it via eval during `gem install`. The payload double-forks a detached background process that opens a TCP connection to the hardcoded host 45.138.12.177:8089 and bidirectionally copies between that socket and a locally spawned /bin/sh, giving the operator of that endpoint interactive shell access on the installer's machine. Execution is gated by anti-analysis checks: the payload only fires when the environment does not look like CI, an ephemeral/sandbox VM (patterns matching uvm/firecracker/sandbox/vagrant), a generated analyst user (patterns matching uA\d+/sandbox/tester/analys/scanner), or a known analysis path (/opt/rubygems, /tmp/, /workspace/), and only when system uptime exceeds 1800 seconds and developer-identifying files exist (~/.ssh, ~/.gitconfig, ~/.gem/credentials, ~/.bundle, ~/.npmrc). The gem's advertised identity is a cover story: it is published as `staking-apr-fetcher` with a staking-related summary, but the README is titled `bitcoin-rpc-lite`, the extension's generated makefile is `bitcoin_rpc_lite_native`, no C sources are shipped for that native target, and the Ruby library (lib/staking_apr_fetcher.rb) is an inert stub defining only VERSION/build_id/healthy?. The package has no legitimate functionality; its sole purpose is to deliver the install-time backdoor.

---

Credit: [OpenSSF](https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages) ([source](https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages/blob/ff41f6680a0ebbef2268cdb5daf253d4b400cb05/osv/malicious/rubygems/staking-apr-fetcher/MAL-2026-17796.json))

**References:**
- https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages/blob/ff41f6680a0ebbef2268cdb5daf253d4b400cb05/osv/malicious/rubygems/staking-apr-fetcher/MAL-2026-17796.json
- https://rubygems.org/gems/staking-apr-fetcher/versions/0.9.1
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-5wxm-jv9m-mw2r

Compromised versions (1)

= 0.9.1

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