offensive-dependency-confusion

offensive-dependency-confusion is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from SnailSploit/Claude-Red. It costs 234 tokens per session (5,667 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to testing dependency confusion and namespace attacks in package managers. Dependency confusion happens when a package manager downloads a public package instead of an organization’s private package with the same name.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it during authorized testing to discover private package names, identify package ecosystems and registry settings, check whether names are publicly available, and run safe proofs of concept.
Why use it?
It helps reveal registry and configuration mistakes that could cause a project to install attacker-controlled code during normal dependency installation.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: positional $N argument.

Good fit Use it during authorized testing to discover private package names, identify package ecosystems and registry settings, check whether names are publicly available, and run safe proofs of concept.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/snailsploit/claude-red/offensive-dependency-confusion
About the project

claude-red is a library of structured skills that give Claude specialized offensive-security methods for areas such as web vulnerabilities, shellcode, exploit development, and identity systems. It is intended for authorized red-team work, bug-bounty triage, security research, CTF preparation, and operator training. Its catalogue contains the project's skills for loading these security specializations into Claude.

SnailSploit/Claude-Red · 3,040 stars · on GitHub

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 SnailSploit/Claude-Red --skill offensive-dependency-confusion
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/SnailSploit/Claude-Red

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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.

agentmods badge for offensive-dependency-confusion

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/snailsploit/claude-red/offensive-dependency-confusion.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/snailsploit/claude-red/offensive-dependency-confusion)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/snailsploit/claude-red/offensive-dependency-confusion"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/snailsploit/claude-red/offensive-dependency-confusion.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 234 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,667 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 16 findings, up to high

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • high Privilege Escalation · line 3
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high Privilege Escalation · line 122
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high Privilege Escalation · line 125
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high Privilege Escalation · line 164
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high Privilege Escalation · line 170
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high Privilege Escalation · line 191
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high Privilege Escalation · line 198
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high Privilege Escalation · line 540
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high Privilege Escalation · line 568
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high Prompt Injection · line 330
    Hidden instructions were detected in comments or invisible text. These could contain malicious directives. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Audit all comments and invisible characters. Remove any instructions that direct the agent to perform unauthorized actions. Use plain, reviewable content.
  • high Prompt Injection · line 383
    Hidden instructions were detected in comments or invisible text. These could contain malicious directives. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Audit all comments and invisible characters. Remove any instructions that direct the agent to perform unauthorized actions. Use plain, reviewable content.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 304
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Server-Side Request Forgery · line 304
    Request target host is built from a dynamic or untrusted value. If the host is attacker-influenced, this enables SSRF to arbitrary internal or metadata endpoints.
    Fix: Do not build request URLs from untrusted input. Validate the host against an allowlist and reject internal/metadata addresses before issuing the request.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 333
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 357
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 557
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
How audits are shown
Origin original 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00234 $0.05667
Opus 5 $0.00117 $0.02833
Sonnet 5 $0.00047 $0.01133
Haiku 4.5 $0.00023 $0.00567

Measured 8d ago against content hash e394e3eb2467, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

offensive-dependency-confusion scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 8d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

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

code=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" "https://pypi.org/pypi/$pkg/json")
Skills/supply-chain/offensive-dependency-confusion/SKILL.md · 603 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 603 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Offensive Dependency Confusion and Namespace Attacks

Dependency confusion exploits a fundamental design tension in package managers: the need to resolve packages from multiple sources. When an organization maintains internal packages alongside public dependencies, the resolution logic becomes an attack surface. You exploit the gap between how developers intend packages to resolve and how package managers actually resolve them.

Alex Birsan's 2021 research demonstrated that this class of attack affected Apple, Microsoft, PayPal, Shopify, Netflix, Yelp, Tesla, and Uber, among others. The root cause -- preferring a higher-versioned public package over a lower-versioned private one -- remains exploitable wherever registry configuration is incomplete.

This skill provides ecosystem-specific exploitation techniques, safe PoC methodology, and comprehensive reconnaissance approaches for discovering internal package names during authorized engagements.

Quick Workflow

  1. Perform reconnaissance to discover internal/private package names used by the target.
  2. Identify the target's package ecosystems and registry configuration.
  3. Verify that candidate package names are unclaimed on the corresponding public registry.
  4. Prepare a safe PoC package with a DNS canary or HTTP callback and a high version number.
  5. Publish the PoC to the public registry with a clear security research description.
  6. Monitor the callback endpoint for execution confirmations from target infrastructure.
  7. Record callback metadata (hostname, username, CI flag, timestamp) as evidence.
  8. Remove the PoC package from the public registry after confirmation or engagement window closes.
  9. Document the full attack chain, impacted systems, and registry hardening recommendations.

Reconnaissance for Internal Package Names

Discovering what internal packages a target uses is the critical first step. You extract package names from every available artifact and signal.

Lock File Analysis

Lock files are the highest-fidelity source of internal package names. They list every resolved dependency with exact versions and, in some formats, the registry source.

Read the full file on GitHub · 603 lines

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.

  1. 8d ago First seen · 603 lines · 234 tokens per session scan A e394e3eb2467

Subscribe to this mod's changes

offensive-dependency-confusion is a skill published in the GitHub repository SnailSploit/Claude-Red (3,040 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 234 tokens to every session and 5,667 once invoked, about $0.0012 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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