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Interview question · Software, Data & Model Supply Chain

Typosquatting, dependency confusion and maintainer hijacking: how does each work, and what stops it?

Three ways a package you never meant to run ends up in your build. AI coding assistants added a fourth: the package that never existed until someone registered it.

mediumEssentialNewPreparation tags: Microsoft, Google, AmazonUpdated Nov 2026

Three ways a package you never meant to run ends up in your build. AI coding assistants added a fourth: the package that never existed until someone registered it.

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What would you say before reading the answer?

  1. 01 State the assumptions your answer depends on.
  2. 02 Explain the mechanism and choose a control.
  3. 03 Name a condition that would change your decision.

The worked answer includes an approach, scoring criteria and follow-up questions. Compare the reasoning with your own.

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What if · the follow-ups in this answer

The answer works through 6 follow-ups like an interviewer would

Your company uses an internal Python package named acme-billing-utils hosted on a private registry, and developers increasingly install packages suggested by AI assistants.

  1. What is dependency confusion?
  2. How do you prevent it?
  3. How does typosquatting differ?
  4. What if a legitimate maintainer's account is hijacked?
  5. What does AI assistance add?
  6. What dependency controls would you put in place?

Each rung has a nudge, a model answer, the principle that carries over and the weak answer to avoid. Sign in free to open it.

UP NEXT ON YOUR JOURNEY
Next in this trackHow would you sign model artifacts and verify their provenance end to end?Next in this trackWhat does SLSA build provenance assert, and what does each level defend against?Next in this trackA Python dependency in your training pipeline is found to be malicious. Walk through your response.
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