Supply-chain threat intelligence
Risk score
92
Indexed incident for pkg-fallback (pypi).
setup.py performs an unconditional urllib.request.urlopen() at install time to a hardcoded plaintext bare-IP endpoint http://157.254.194.200:8080/dependency-payload-1.0.0.tar.gz, with exceptions silently swallowed. This fires automatically during pip install (build/setup phase), confirming code execution on the installer's machine and disclosing the installer's network identity to attacker-controlled infrastructure. The distribution is published as 'pkg-fallback' but ships an unrelated 'string_kit' module described as 'string-kit' in README/PKG-INFO; the name/module divergence together with the install-time bare-IP beacon and the attacker-suggestive payload filename ('dependency-payload') is consistent with a dependency-confusion staging/enumeration package rather than a genuine utility.
Package exploits dependency confusion. A beacon request is used to report usage back, but no additional information are exfiltrated.
Category: PROBABLY_PENTEST - Packages looking like typical pentest packages, but also anything that looks like testing, exploring pre-prepared kits, research & co, with clearly low-harm possibilities.
Campaign: GENERIC-beacon-dependency-confusion
Reasons (based on the campaign):
typosquatting
dependency-confusion
Affected versions
Indicators
Timeline