slopsquatting en · NOUN
Etymology
From slop (“junk output from generative artificial intelligence”) + squatting. Coined by developer Seth Larson in 2025. Compare cybersquatting, typosquatting, and AI slop.
Meanings
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(Internet, qualifier:artificial intelligence, uncountable) A form of cybersquatting where a non-existent software package that has been hallucinated by a large language model is registered by a malicious actor.
One such risk is slopsquatting, a new term for a surprisingly effective type of software supply chain attack that emerges when LLMs “hallucinate” package names that don’t actually exist. If you’ve ever seen an AI recommend a package and thought, “Wait, is that real?”—you’ve already encountered the foundation of the problem.
2025 April 9, Sarah Gooding, “The Rise of Slopsquatting”, in Socket, archived from the original on 09 Apr 2025:AI already famously hallucinates, so weaponizing those visions is nothing other than a logical next step. "Slopsquatting," where attackers create malicious software packages using names AI models have already hallucinated into existence, is already a thing.
2026 January 22, Jonny Evans, “Jamf has a warning for macOS vibe coders”, in Computerworld, via EBSCOhost, →ISSN:The best way to mitigate slopsquatting is for developers to proactively monitor every dependency and use tools to vet dependencies before adding them to projects, the vendor concluded.
2025 April 14, Phil Muncaster, “AI Hallucinations Create “Slopsquatting” Supply Chain Threat”, in Infosecurity Magazine:Slopsquatting – when an LLM hallucinates a non-existent package name, and a bad actor registers it maliciously. The AI brother of typosquatting. Credit to @sethmlarson for the name
[2025 April 8, Andrew Nesbitt, Mastodon: