Deceitful PyPI Package Solana Consumers, Swipes Blockchain Wallet Keys

August 11, 2024Ravie LakshmananProduct Supply Chain / Application Security

Cybersecurity analysts have unearthed a new harmful parcel on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that pretends to be a collection from the Solana blockchain platform but actually intends to grab victims’ confidential information.

“The authorized Solana Python API project is recognized as ‘solana-py’ on GitHub, but merely ‘solana‘ on the Python software registry, PyPI,” Ax Sharma, a researcher at Sonatype, remarked in a report shared last week. “A malevolent actor took advantage of this slight naming discrepancy and pushed a ‘solana-py’ project on PyPI.”

The harmful “solana-py” parcel enticed a total of 1,122 installations since its publication on August 4, 2024. It is no longer retrievable for download from PyPI.

The most noteworthy feature of the library is that it labeled itself with version identifiers 0.34.3, 0.34.4, and 0.34.5. The most recent version of the authentic “solana” collection is 0.34.3. This clearly indicates an effort by the malevolent actor to deceive users seeking “solana” into mistakenly acquiring “solana-py” instead.

Additionally, the deceitful package appropriates authentic code from its counterpart but inserts extra code in the “__init__.py” script to illicitly collect Solana blockchain wallet credentials from the host system.

This data is then sent out to a Hugging Face Spaces domain operated by the malevolent actor (“treeprime-gen.hf[.]space”), once again highlighting how malicious entities are exploiting authentic services for harmful objectives.

This attack campaign raises a risk in the supply chain as Sonatype’s probe unveiled that authentic libraries like “solders” make references to “solana-py” in their PyPI documentation, potentially leading to a scenario where developers may have mistakenly fetched “solana-py” from PyPI, consequently expanding the attack vector.

“In essence, if a developer utilizing the legitimate ‘solders’ PyPI bundle in their application is misled (by solders’ documentation) to fall for the misnamed ‘solana-py’ project, they would inadvertently introduce a cryptic data thief into their application,” Sharma elaborated.

“This act would not only rob their confidential data but also that of any user running the developer’s application.”

This revelation coincides with Phylum’s announcement that they have identified countless spam npm bundles on the registry bearing characteristics of Tea protocol exploitation, a scheme that came to notice initially in April 2024.

“The Tea protocol initiative is taking remedial actions against this issue,” the supply chain security enterprise stated. “It would be unjust to participants in the Tea protocol to witness a reduction in their rewards due to the fraudulent activities of others. Furthermore, npm has commenced the process to eliminate some of these cheaters, yet their takedown pace does not match the rate of new releases.”