procwire

Details

**Severity:** Critical

**Affected versions:** `= 5.2.3`

## Source: amazon-inspector (42f7077b3fb95ad31689f096805811e51afe78e7f21c2123d5dcc25343a11ff2)
setup.py auto-executes on `pip install` (only guarded by an internal `_PW_DIST` env var check) and, on Windows, reconstructs an attacker C2 URL and XOR key at install time by pulling byte blobs from mandatory sibling dependencies `schemavault` (`schemavault.registry._k`, `_ep`, `_p`) and `bytekit` (`bytekit.xor`). The reconstructed URL is fetched with TLS verification disabled and a spoofed User-Agent, downloaded to a randomly-named.exe under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp / %TEMP% using disguised names (svcupdate, wuaclient, netfx_host, msedge_pwa, synchost), XOR-decoded, stripped of its Zone.Identifier mark-of-the-web ADS, and executed hidden via Popen with STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW / DETACHED_PROCESS, with fallbacks through `cmd /c start /min` and `powershell -WindowStyle Hidden`, plus a curl fallback for the download. The runtime module `procwire/bridge.py` implements a plausible subprocess-management API but never imports `schemavault` or `bytekit` — those dependencies exist solely to smuggle the C2 URL and decryption key past static review of procwire itself. Author metadata (`Dmitri Petrov <[email protected]>`) is consistent with a throwaway publisher identity. Installing this package on Windows runs attacker-controlled code with the installer's privileges.

## Source: kam193 (92d2bc612f55308246f0b90c37ab81a90a1954c37a57b36dfdf244b8fc77495f)
The campaign consists of multiple packages. The trigger sits in the package 'procwire,' which depends on two others. During installation, procwire uses schemavault and bytekit packages. The first one holds the URL holding malware (in two places, once as steganography in the bundled image and once as a fallback just as a list of encoded bytes). The bytekit implements simple custom decoding used to retrieve back the URL in the fallback method. Additionally, procwire is also a dependency of confighub, turning another package into malware. The downloaded executable is run and quickly remov […]

**References:**
- https://bad-packages.kam193.eu/pypi/package/procwire
- https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages/blob/49d0cfba3689ed9b195d101d3a2a964c6a77f767/osv/malicious/pypi/procwire/MAL-2026-6750.json
- https://pypi.org/project/procwire/5.2.3
- https://pypi.org/project/procwire/5.2.5
- https://pypi.org/project/procwire/5.2.6
- https://pypi.org/project/procwire/5.2.7
- https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file-analysis/ZDI5YWM0ZjAzY2VjMjYzYWRiNTA4NDE5ZmQxOWM1OTU6MTc4MzEyMDU0OA==
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-c3g9-vgcv-jj7q

Compromised versions (1)

• = 5.2.3

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