rsquestsPyPI
Advisory published Updated
rsquests is a confirmed malicious PyPI package (MAL-2026-5304) that steals credentials and exfiltrates sensitive data (malicious versions 2.34.2, 2.34.3). Do not install it — remove it immediately and rotate any exposed credentials.
Malicious code in rsquests (PyPI)
What this malware does
The package name rsquests is a single-character insertion typo of the top-100 PyPI package requests. Package metadata and source are a verbatim copy of upstream requests: rsquests/__version__.py sets __title__ = "requests", METADATA lists Author-email: Kenneth Reitz <[email protected]>, and top_level.txt declares the top-level package as requests (so import requests after installing rsquests resolves to this package's bundled copy, shadowing the real upstream if it isn't installed). The full public API (get/post/put/delete/Session/...) is replicated, so a developer who mistypes pip install requests as pip install rsquests gets working behavior and may not notice the substitution. No exfiltration, RCE, dropper, credential harvest, or silent-relay payload is present in this version — the install-time and import-time code paths match the upstream library. The risk is name-confusion plus future-version risk: the squatted name normalizes the typo and provides a vector if a later release introduces a malicious payload. Routing to human review per typosquat-without-payload policy — name-similarity is a subjective signal and the absence of a current payload means this does not meet the bar for an automated block.
Typosquatting package published from a compromised account with an obfuscated infostealer. The infostealer is a heavily obfuscated JavaScript code executed using Bun runtime on Python startup. It collectes all kinds of sensitive data, including API keys, credentials to package repositories, cryptocurrency assets, password manager data. Infostealer actively queries online services to collect additional secrets as well as attempts to gain persistence and spread further by publishing infected packages using collected credentials. Data are exfiltrated likely using Github. The code seems to threaten to wipe the user's data if it detects invalid GitHub tokens. Cleanup should be done with caution.
It seems to be related to the recent Mini Shai Hulud campaign.
Category: MALICIOUS - The campaign has clearly malicious intent, like infostealers.
Campaign: 2026-06-compr-woodpecker
Reasons (based on the campaign):
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compromised-package
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exfiltration-env-variables
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exfiltration-cloud-tokens
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exfiltration-credentials
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abuses-pth
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obfuscation
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infostealer
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The package contains code to detect if it is running in a sandbox environment.
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exfiltration-crypto
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files-exfiltration
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destructive-actions
Malicious versions
Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)
Detection & response playbook
Credential / info stealerFind it
Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for rsquests (2 malicious versions).
If you installed it — respond
rsquests 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 rsquests 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 rsquests-class packages before install and in CI — and if it already ran, its runtime egress monitoring catches the credential exfiltration and severs the channel.