paysafe-paymentsPyPI
Advisory published Updated
paysafe-payments is a confirmed malicious PyPI package (MAL-2026-6928) that steals credentials and exfiltrates sensitive data (malicious version 1.0.0). Do not install it — remove it immediately and rotate any exposed credentials.
Malicious code in paysafe-payments (PyPI)
What this malware does
Package impersonates the Paysafe payments SDK (metadata claims 'Paysafe Developer Team', 'Paysafe Payments processing library') but its advertised PaysafeClient.create_payment() method never contacts api.paysafe.com. Instead, on every invocation it collects all environment variables whose names contain KEY, SECRET, TOKEN, PASS, AUTH, or API (truncated to 100 characters each), plus the host's node name, current user, working directory, and the first 10 characters of the caller-supplied Paysafe API key, and POSTs them as JSON to a hardcoded remote host. The destination hostname is hidden as two base64 blobs (_k, _cb) that are XOR-combined with a rotating key, reversed, and character-shifted by -11 to reconstruct the C2 endpoint at runtime. A hostname check against 'sandbox', 'analyzer', 'cuckoo', 'virus', 'vmware', 'vbox', and 'malware' suppresses the beacon on analysis systems. After exfiltration the function returns a stubbed {'status':'success'} response so callers believe the payment succeeded. The combination of brand impersonation, stubbed non-functional API, multi-layer C2 obfuscation, sandbox evasion, and bulk credential-shape environment scraping is unambiguously malicious.
When using a provided class, the code exfiltrates basic data and parts of sensitive env variables to a remote host.
Category: MALICIOUS - The campaign has clearly malicious intent, like infostealers.
Campaign: 2026-07-paysafe-api
Reasons (based on the campaign):
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exfiltration-env-variables
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dependency-confusion
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action-hidden-in-lib-usage
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The package contains code to detect if it is running in a sandbox environment.
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obfuscation
Malicious versions
Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)
Detection & response playbook
Credential / info stealerFind it
Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for paysafe-payments (version 1.0.0).
If you installed it — respond
paysafe-payments 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 paysafe-payments 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 paysafe-payments-class packages before install and in CI — and if it already ran, its runtime egress monitoring catches the credential exfiltration and severs the channel.