Which versions of bitciin are malicious?

The following RubyGems versions of bitciin are flagged malicious: 1.0.0. Treat any of these as compromised.

How do I remediate bitciin if I installed it?

bitciin 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.

I already installed bitciin — how do I know if it already compromised me?

If bitciin 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.

Is bitciin part of a known attack campaign?

Yes — bitciin is associated with the IN-MAL-2026-021058 campaign. Packages in the same campaign often share infrastructure and payloads, so check whether any related packages are also in your dependency tree.

How do I find bitciin across my projects, lockfiles, and CI pipelines?

Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for bitciin (version 1.0.0).

Malicious package

bitciinRubyGems

Advisory published Oct 5, 2026Updated Oct 6, 2026

bitciin is a confirmed malicious RubyGems package (MAL-2026-17582) 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 bitciin (RubyGems)

MAL-2026-17582

Immediate action

Remove the package, then rotate any secrets the build/runtime could reach.

gem uninstall bitciin

What this malware does

RubyGems runs this gem's native extension script ext/bitciin/extconf.rb during gem install. The script exits without action on CI runners and sandboxes, based on CI environment variables, the hostname, the username and the working directory. It continues if the system uptime is over 30 minutes and the home directory holds .ssh, .gitconfig, .npmrc, .gem/credentials or .bundle. It then decodes a Base64 Ruby payload and forks twice into a detached process. After 20 to 40 minutes the payload downloads http://45.138.12.177:8092/wgkit.tar.gz to /tmp/.w1.tgz with curl, extracts it to /tmp/.w1/, runs wg_install.sh with bash and deletes both. The payload stores the URL XOR-encoded with the key usv\x9a. The Ruby code in lib/ is a decoy. The RubyGems account reqthrottle_3474 published this gem and 41 others with the same loader on 2026-10-05.

The gem declares a native extension (ext/bitciin/extconf.rb) that runs during gem install. The shipped C source (ext/bitciin/bitciin.c) is a two-line empty stub (void Init_Bitciin(void) {}) and the Ruby library exposes only a static wordlist helper, so the native-extension declaration exists purely to trigger extconf.rb. extconf.rb applies a sandbox-evasion gate (checks for CI environment variables, hostname/username/cwd regexes, uptime > 1800s, and presence of ~/.ssh, ~/.gitconfig, ~/.gem/credentials, ~/.bundle, and /.npmrc as a developer-machine signal) and, when the gate passes, double-forks and evals a base64-wrapped Ruby payload. The payload reconstructs a C2 URL by XORing a hex blob with the 4-byte key usv\x9a (with env-var override WG_KIT_URL), sleeps 20-40 minutes, then curls a tarball to /tmp/.w1.tgz and executes bash /tmp/.w1/wg_install.sh. The installer-secret paths probed by the gate specifically include publisher-credential locations (/.gem/credentials, ~/.npmrc), consistent with a credential-targeted stage-2.

The OpenSSF Package Analysis project identified 'bitciin' @ 1.0.0 (rubygems) as malicious.

It is considered malicious because:

The package executes one or more commands associated with malicious behavior.

Malicious versions

1 flagged

1.0.0

Indicators of compromise (SHA-256)

73144cb471499af4467e7c8c2a6da34013285179444e101290faa7ec9fda0a19

63fda57a3acbe357c8cc9b7bc0a2f619fac4928bab9a794fb5960d0ee0e6d54b

Detection & response playbook

Credential / info stealer

Find it
Search your lockfiles and build artifacts for bitciin (version 1.0.0).
If you installed it — respond
bitciin 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 bitciin 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

No. bitciin on RubyGems has been identified as a malicious package (version 1.0.0 flagged). It should be removed immediately — do not install or keep it in your dependency tree.

Campaign

IN-MAL-2026-021058

References

Credits

Amazon Inspector · finder
OpenSSF: Package Analysis · finder
SafeDep · finder

Detect & block this

O3 blocks bitciin-class packages before install and in CI — and if it already ran, its runtime egress monitoring catches the credential exfiltration and severs the channel.

Malware detection Runtime egress monitoring

Explore

All malware advisories How O3 detects malware Vulnerability database