jsonschemavalidationPyPI
Advisory published Updated
jsonschemavalidation is a confirmed malicious PyPI package (MAL-2026-6945) that steals credentials and exfiltrates sensitive data (malicious version 4.26.0). Do not install it — remove it immediately and rotate any exposed credentials.
Malicious code in jsonschemavalidation (PyPI)
What this malware does
The PyPI project jsonschemavalidation builds a wheel whose installed top-level package is literally jsonschema ([tool.hatch.build.targets.wheel] packages = ["src/jsonschema"]). Project metadata (author name, homepage pointing at github.com/python-jsonschema/jsonschema, README, description) mirrors the legitimate upstream jsonschema project. Installing this distribution places files into the real jsonschema import namespace on the installer, so import jsonschema in downstream code would resolve to the code shipped by this distribution rather than the genuine one. The current 4.26.0 contents appear to be an unmodified copy of upstream and no exfiltration, install-time fetch-and-execute, credential harvesting, silent-relay, backdoor, or other installer-harm payload is present in this version. The concern is the namespace-collision channel itself: a name-confusion distribution that populates a widely-used import name is a plausible squat/hijack setup, but name-similarity and namespace collision alone are subjective signals without a payload, so human review is appropriate rather than an automatic block.
A clone of a legitimate package with an embeded reverse shell. In the published version, the reverse shell was connecting to a private IP address suggesting the package was not yet fully weaponized.
Category: MALICIOUS - The campaign has clearly malicious intent, like infostealers.
Campaign: 2026-07-jsonschemavalidation
Reasons (based on the campaign):
-
The package contains code to create a reverse shell, allowing an attacker to execute any commands on the victim's machine.
-
clones-real-package
-
obfuscation
Malicious versions
Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)
Detection & response playbook
Credential / info stealerFind it
Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for jsonschemavalidation (version 4.26.0).
If you installed it — respond
jsonschemavalidation 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 jsonschemavalidation 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
- Kamil Mańkowski (kam193) · reporter
Detect & block this
O3 blocks jsonschemavalidation-class packages before install and in CI — and if it already ran, its runtime egress monitoring catches the credential exfiltration and severs the channel.