cleanup-string

GHSA-r9mq-4q39-vw6h

Malicious code in cleanup-string (PyPI)

Details

**Severity:** Critical

**Affected versions:** `= 1.0.0`

## Source: amazon-inspector (844c5afa9f00c02149f4f6314447c5738e04ed419014809c1df83f31aa012525)
The package advertises itself as a pure-Python string helper (strip, slugify, case conversion, whitespace collapse) and its README states the implementation is standard-library only. However, `cleanup_string/__init__.py` performs `from._impl import cleanup`, which loads a 1.3 MB Windows-only native extension `cleanup_string/_impl.cp313-win_amd64.vmp.pyd` (sha256 980ae204f04f9a7e68666670eb5b236bc7347d0111697df1015de665fd1a1712). The filename embeds the VMProtect convention `.vmp` and the binary matches that packer's signature: the only readable strings are Win32 API imports (LoadLibraryA, GetModuleHandleA, HeapAlloc, DisableThreadLibraryCalls, ExitProcess, KERNEL32.dll, VCRUNTIME140.dll) and the remaining ~1.3 MB is high-entropy virtualized code. VMProtect exists to defeat static and dynamic analysis; the trivial advertised functionality has no legitimate need for a virtualized native module. Any Windows Python 3.13 environment that imports `cleanup_string` executes this opaque, anti-analysis-protected code with the privileges of the importing process.

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Credit: [OpenSSF](https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages) ([source](https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages/blob/c19ea3a01baa8c935920324eacf35bf5e92654fb/osv/malicious/pypi/cleanup-string/MAL-2026-17325.json))

**References:**
- https://github.com/ossf/malicious-packages/blob/c19ea3a01baa8c935920324eacf35bf5e92654fb/osv/malicious/pypi/cleanup-string/MAL-2026-17325.json
- https://pypi.org/project/cleanup-string/1.0.0
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-r9mq-4q39-vw6h

Compromised versions (1)

= 1.0.0

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