telemetry-helper

Details

**Severity:** Critical

**Affected versions:** `= 1.0.1`

## Source: amazon-inspector (26ef1779c00c37e2ee65632fefde6bbe242f5a15294ee018caa1d1d2ad5b6000)
On `import telemetry_helper`, top-level code starts a daemon thread that sleeps 30 seconds and then POSTs a JSON payload containing the hostname, username, current working directory, and the entire process environment (`dict(os.environ)`) to a hardcoded webhook.site inbox at https://webhook.site/e32d3b8a-a5df-40cc-ae60-7a8343b581e4. `os.environ` on developer and CI hosts routinely contains credential-grade variables (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID / AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, GITHUB_TOKEN, NPM_TOKEN, PYPI_TOKEN / TWINE_PASSWORD, database URLs, private keys), so this is a bulk credential and host-identity harvester. The destination is an anonymous third-party webhook inbox unrelated to any declared publisher, and the 30-second delay before the POST is consistent with evasion of short-lived install/import sandboxes. The behavior fires unconditionally at import with no opt-out and no relation to any advertised functionality.

## Source: kam193 (f1bdc82cf3a04a5e654f400c53ec66cdbdd1c8ad0709c37eb653ab2eac4830db)
In this campaign, one package contains malicious code exfiltrating environment variables during import (telemetry-helper), and another one intentionally installs it as a dependency.


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


Campaign: 2026-09-telemetry-helper


Reasons (based on the campaign):


 - exfiltration-env-variables


 - The malicious code is intentionally included in a dependency of the package

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Credit: [OpenSSF](https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages) ([source](https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages/blob/65028872c20a95724af35f78a4c399248291b3ce/osv/malicious/pypi/telemetry-helper/MAL-2026-15829.json))

**References:**
- https://bad-packages.kam193.eu/pypi/package/telemetry-helper
- https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages/blob/65028872c20a95724af35f78a4c399248291b3ce/osv/malicious/pypi/telemetry-helper/MAL-2026-15829.json
- https://pypi.org/project/telemetry-helper/1.0.0
- https://pypi.org/project/telemetry-helper/1.0.1
- https://pypi.org/project/telemetry-helper/1.0.2
- https://pypi.org/project/telemetry-helper/1.1.0
- https://pypi.org/project/telemetry-helper/1.2.0
- https://pypi.org/project/telemetry-helper/1.3.0

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.