Hacker News

Why does mathmain need an encrypted loader?

67 points by abhisek 2 hours ago | 12 comments

j2kun 2 hours ago

Why in the world would that specific 3x3 matrix be a trigger for an attack? Are they trying to find someone doing some particular kind of numerical analysis?

zarzavat 56 minutes ago

Presumably it's so it can be used as a subdependency for setting up an attack in a popular, legitimate package, e.g. via a pull request. The code in the legitimate package would not arouse suspicion at all.

krackers 11 minutes ago

Now I'm curious what the target was. Are there any notable classes of programs/problems where you'd do an LU decomposition of this specific matrix?

tranceylc 30 minutes ago

I would assume it’s actually so they can allow it to spread before it gets activated. Then do something that affects the entire chain of package dependencies

coder-pm 12 minutes ago

This matrix is not a condition, it’s a key. JSON.stringify with it’s data goes to the scrypt as a password and that creates an AES-256-GCM key. There is no if, every other input won’t decrypt. That’s why no one will get payload from the package without knowing the exact input.

altairprime 44 minutes ago

> We found a remote access implant hidden inside [email protected], an npm package that copies the popular mathjs library.

The NPM package not named in the clickbait-y post title is “mathmain@1.0.0”, for those who run into this particular site obstacle; the later packages also named are “mathsbase” and “math-universe”. (EDIT: I see the submission title has been updated, so that’s my complaint addressed, thanks mods!)

Safedep, if you’re reading this, perhaps you should reconsider having that site feature applied to your post — or if it’s something you enabled in, say, Cloudflare, perhaps file a support ticket noting that their email protection is hiding package version strings.

QuantumNomad_ 29 minutes ago

Probably Cloudflare. For me it shows the package name rather than a redaction. But from memory, Cloudflare email protection redacts it that way in the HTML and then adds a little JS to put it back in which might also do some kind of check to see if it thinks you are a real user before unredacting it.

nextzck 47 minutes ago

Fascinating how intricate the target selection is on this

fshafique 48 minutes ago

Does the FBI or any other law-enforcement office follow up on these backdoors? Is this considered a crime, or even conspiracy to commit a crime, or is it only the act of using the backdoor that's a crime?

I can also see that it's still up in NPM without any warning of any kind: - https://www.npmjs.com/package/mathmain

But the Github repo for the package and the author are down: - https://github.com/allendev12 - https://github.com/allendev12/mathmain

altairprime 2 minutes ago

[delayed]

hiddenvulkcan 39 minutes ago

[dead]

TZubiri 41 minutes ago

My strategy of not using dependencies at all seems to be getting stronger everyday.

Also no LLM generated skipping this hypetrain completely. Just hand written code I can personally vouch for. Code in exchange for cash, this is professional business, Boss.

Btw, I'm available for hire, preferably by Pre Market Fit or pre-MVP startups, email in profile.

iLoveOncall 18 minutes ago

Let us know in 2838 when you finish your first program, would love to check it out!

zzril 4 minutes ago

Had I found sthg like this, I'd be proud to tell everyone and certainly enjoy doing the writeup. But this smells like it was ai-written...

hiddenvulkcan 42 minutes ago

[dead]