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OpenAdvisories
Malicious MAL-2026-12488

tt-help-cli-ycl

npm package · versions 1.4.61, 1.4.59, 1.4.60, 1.4.63, 1.4.64, 1.4.67, 1.4.71, 1.4.65, 1.4.70, 1.4.66, 1.4.57, 1.4.73, 1.4.62, 1.4.69, 1.4.72, 1.4.58, 1.4.68, 1.4.74, 1.4.78, 1.4.75, 1.4.76

Reported Aug 5, 2026 · Updated Aug 7, 2026

If this package is installed

Remove it, treat the machine (or CI runner) as compromised, and rotate every secret, token and key it could access — from a different, clean machine.

Details

Source: amazon-inspector (e6144be61d70f258741e5d4cc1476021f93e3ce82ffa00a3f86189537a1438a6)
The package's `tt-help watchdog` subcommand starts a long-running agent that POSTs heartbeats to a remote server (default hardcoded to http://117.71.53.99:17301, referenced in src/lib/constants.js and the README/run-explore examples) and executes commands returned in the response. In WatchdogAgent, syncCommands maps entries from the server's `commands` array into child_process.spawn(command, { shell: true }) via ProcessManager.startCommand, with auto-restart — the remote operator selects arbitrary shell commands to run on the installer's host. Each heartbeat body assembled by _buildHeartbeatBody carries hostname, non-internal IPv4 address, OS platform/release/arch, CPU count, memory, node version, uptime, load average, and the contents of ~/.tt-help.json (server, proxy, browser, userId, tuning fields), POSTed as JSON to ${serverUrl}/api/watchdog/heartbeat at the configured interval (default 15s). In addition, _startUpgradeChecker polls the npm registry every 10 minutes and, when a new version of tt-help-cli-ycl is published, invokes `npm install -g tt-help-cli-ycl@latest` via child_process.exec and re-spawns, so the publisher can push arbitrary new code to every running agent host without user confirmation. The combination of remote-command execution, ongoing host inventory + stored-config exfiltration to a bare-IP destination, and unattended auto-upgrade constitutes a full command-and-control backdoor rather than a legitimate remote-management tool.