kafka-rollerPyPI
Advisory published Updated
kafka-roller is a confirmed malicious PyPI package (MAL-2026-17703) that steals credentials and exfiltrates sensitive data (malicious versions 99.0.0, 99.0.1, 99.0.2…). Do not install it — remove it immediately and rotate any exposed credentials.
Malicious code in kafka-roller (PyPI)
What this malware does
The package is published to PyPI under the name kafka-roller with metadata impersonating Tesla's teslamotors/kafka-helmsman project (homepage points at github.com/teslamotors/kafka-helmsman while the publisher is an unaffiliated account), and version 99.0.4 is pinned implausibly high — the dependency-confusion squat shape. setup.py starts a module-level daemon thread during pip's metadata/wheel build that collects hostname, current working directory, platform information, a timestamp and a UUID, and transmits them via HTTPS POST to https://webhook.site/bf5cb178-e0cf-43b6-8b1e-fb5d2f6ea9c9 and via HTTPS GET plus DNS lookups to a subdomain of oast.site (an interactsh out-of-band collector). The DNS channel is driven by subprocess invocations of nslookup/getent/dig against an attacker-chosen hostname, providing a secondary exfiltration path that bypasses HTTP egress filtering. The beacon fires on any pip processing of the sdist without installer consent, and leaks internal host and build-environment identifiers for any build system that misresolves the kafka-roller name to this PyPI package. A self-description as 'dependency-confusion security research' does not change the behavior: install-time out-of-band callbacks carrying host identifiers to attacker-controlled collectors are exfiltration regardless of framing.
Installing the package or importing the module exfiltrates basic information about the host, and the package has no other purpose.
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-standard-pypi-install-pentest
Reasons (based on the campaign):
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The package contains code to exfiltrate basic data from the system, like IP or username. It has a limited risk.
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The package overrides the install command in setup.py to execute malicious code during installation.
The OpenSSF Package Analysis project identified 'kafka-roller' @ 99.0.0 (pypi) as malicious.
It is considered malicious because:
- The package communicates with a domain associated with malicious activity.
Malicious versions
Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)
Detection & response playbook
Credential / info stealerFind it
Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for kafka-roller (7 malicious versions).
If you installed it — respond
kafka-roller 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 kafka-roller 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
- OpenSSF: Package Analysis · finder
Detect & block this
O3 blocks kafka-roller-class packages before install and in CI — and if it already ran, its runtime egress monitoring catches the credential exfiltration and severs the channel.