Security Study of 6,309 Claude Skills Finds 70% Carry High-Risk Capabilities

·2026.10.21 04:56

Key point

Analysis of 6,309 public skills reveals that while only 5.4% are malicious, 70% possess capabilities like shell access or credential theft that pose significant security risks.

Details

70% of 6,309 profiled Claude skills carry at least one high-risk capability, including shell access (50%), file writes (31%), outbound network (31%), or credential access (13%)
Only 5.4% of the skills received a threat verdict, yet 80% of skills at the highest exposure levels had no threat verdict at all
59% of skills that define allowed-tools understate their actual capabilities, and 99% of skills with dependencies leave at least one unpinned
Popularity is not a safety signal; more popular skills tended to have more capabilities in the dataset
The study recommends reading scripts rather than just descriptions and treating allowed-tools as author-selected auto-approvals rather than a complete capability list

security claude vulnerability skills ai-agents arxiv

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