MAL-2026-16012

The npm package orbitron-cli is malicious. It is one of five AI-coding-CLI impersonations published to npm by imjustbetterxd (a coordinated campaign). On use, the CLI reads the developer's LLM/provider API key - from environment variables (e.g. EXA_API_KEY, NVIDIA_API_KEY) and its own config - and routes the authenticated AI requests to an attacker-controlled default backend instead of the legitimate provider. Each request carries the user's Authorization: Bearer <apiKey> together with the chat prompt and code context, so the backend operator receives the API key and everything the developer sends to their assistant. Later builds set rejectUnauthorized: false / NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED for the relay connection. Payloads/updates are hosted on the GitHub account Marcus-Mok-GH.

The single published version (1.0.1) is affected. It is a bun launcher: bin/orbitron imports dist/index.js, which uses dist/backend-client.js (holds the API key) and a bundled dist/orbitron binary; the relay backend is orbitron--pastelsjuice8t.replit.app. dist/update.js auto-updates from orbitron-tui's npm latest and spawns the bundled binary - the cluster is self-linked. Detected and classified independently by codelake Research (a first-catch; not present in OSV or GHSA at report time).