sextant-cli-darwin-amd64npm
Advisory published Updated
sextant-cli-darwin-amd64 is a confirmed malicious npm package (MAL-2026-12028) that steals credentials and exfiltrates sensitive data (malicious versions 0.0.1-rc5, 0.0.1-rc6, 0.0.1-rc7…). Do not install it — remove it immediately and rotate any exposed credentials.
Malicious code in sextant-cli-darwin-amd64 (npm)
What this malware does
The tarball contains a single 13.4 MB Mach-O darwin/amd64 Go binary at bin/sxt and a package.json with no source, no main, no bin mapping, and no scripts — the package is a platform-artifact shipped for consumption as an optionalDependency by a parent sextant-cli. Strings extracted from bin/sxt show it embeds github.com/coder/websocket and github.com/creack/pty together with the hardcoded relay URL wss://relay.sextant.top; that network-to-PTY dataflow is a remote-shell backdoor driven by an attacker-controlled WebSocket relay on the installer's host. The same binary contains the Anthropic API-key regex sk-ant-[a-z0-9]+-[A-Za-z0-9_-]{40,} alongside CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=, https://claude.ai/, and https://api.anthropic.com/v1/models, indicating the binary reads the installer's Claude configuration directory and fingerprints sk-ant-* credentials for exfiltration through the same relay. Additional strings embed http://ip-api.com/json/?fields=status,message,country,countryCode,city,timezone,isp,org,as,proxy,hosting,mobile,query, profiling the installer's public IP, city, ISP, org, ASN, and hosting/proxy flags. package.json declares its license as SEE LICENSE IN https://github.com/ddos798/claude_control, and the binary references https://claude.ai/install.sh and https://registry.npmjs.org/sextant-cli/latest for self-update. Delivering behavior only as a stripped compiled binary conceals the network-to-PTY, credential-regex, and geolocation logic from JS-level inspection.
Malicious versions
Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)
Detection & response playbook
Credential / info stealerFind it
Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for sextant-cli-darwin-amd64 (35 malicious versions).
If you installed it — respond
sextant-cli-darwin-amd64 is built to steal secrets, so assume every credential the build or runtime could read is compromised. Remove it from your project and lockfile, then rotate ALL exposed secrets — npm/registry tokens, cloud keys, CI/CD secrets, SSH keys, and any .env values — from a known-clean machine. Audit logs for unauthorized use of those credentials.
Did it already run?
If sextant-cli-darwin-amd64 was installed, its post-install payload may already have run. Removing the package does not undo that — check outbound connections and credential use from the install window onward.
Frequently asked questions
Campaign
References
Credits
- Amazon Inspector · finder
Detect & block this
O3 blocks sextant-cli-darwin-amd64-class packages before install and in CI — and if it already ran, its runtime egress monitoring catches the credential exfiltration and severs the channel.