New HalluSquatting Attack Could Trick AI Coding Assistants Into Installing Botnet Malware

Researchers describe "HalluSquatting": an attack that exploits AI assistants' tendency to hallucinate resource names and their ability to fetch and execute external content. Attackers identify names AIs are likely to invent, register those packages/plugins/domains, embed adversarial instructions, and wait for assistants to pull and run them—potentially installing bots across many systems. The report includes experimental results across multiple assistants, an observed benign spread (react-codeshift), and recommends fixes such as forcing lookups before fetches, disabling unattended auto-run modes, and platform-side protections.