Perplexity Built a Tool That Checks Your Computer for Infected Software—Without Setting Off the Infection

In brief

• Bumblebee is a free, open-source tool that checks developer computers for compromised software, browser extensions, and AI connector configs—without running the infected code.
• Most scanners work by invoking the software they're checking, which can accidentally trigger the attacks they're meant to detect.
• It's the first open-source scanner to treat MCP config files—the connectors that give AI tools access to your data—as a security surface. Imagine you suspect someone poisoned a bottle of water in your house. To check, you drink from every bottle. That's roughly how most security scanners work. Perplexity just open-sourced a tool called Bumblebee that takes a different approach. It scans developer computers for infected software packages, malicious browser extensions, and compromised AI tool configs—without ever running the code it finds. It reads the code, the ingredient label instead of eating the food. On May 11, a hacker group called TeamPCP slipped malicious code into over 160 software packages used by millions of developers worldwide—including packages from Mistral AI, UiPath, and a widely used React tool with 12 million weekly downloads. The attack spread automatically the moment developers installed those packages. Perplexity’s Bumblebee could have prevented that, the company says.

Why "read-only" is the whole point

Software packages—especially in the JavaScript world—can run hidden scripts the moment you install them. That's exactly how the May 11 attack spread so fast. The malicious code fired automatically on install, before anyone noticed anything was wrong. A scanner that invokes the package manager to check for infections can trigger those same scripts. You go looking for the worm; the worm runs. Bumblebee sidesteps this by never calling any package manager at all. It reads raw metadata files—the records that describe what's installed—without touching the software itself.