collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host

collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host is a skill for Claude Code from 26zl/cybersec-toolkit. It costs 41 tokens per session (2,556 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to collecting short-lived forensic evidence from a compromised computer, including memory, network connections, running programs, and system state. Volatile evidence can disappear when the machine is isolated or shut down.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it during incident response to capture memory, processes, connections, and other live system details while maintaining evidence integrity and chain of custody.
Why use it?
It helps preserve clues needed to understand an attack, identify memory-only malware, and support legal or internal investigations.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: installed under .claude/.

Part of the cybersec-toolkit plugin — 197 skills, 2 hooks, 1 MCP server shipped together

Good fit Use it during incident response to capture memory, processes, connections, and other live system details while maintaining evidence integrity and chain of custody.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/26zl/cybersec-toolkit/collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host
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 26zl/cybersec-toolkit --skill collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/26zl/cybersec-toolkit

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install cybersec-toolkit, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 197 skills, 2 hooks, 1 MCP server.

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 collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/26zl/cybersec-toolkit/collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/26zl/cybersec-toolkit/collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/26zl/cybersec-toolkit/collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/26zl/cybersec-toolkit/collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/26zl/cybersec-toolkit/collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/26zl/cybersec-toolkit/collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 41 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,556 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. 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: 2 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 YARA Match · line 175
    YARA rule matched a known malware signature (reverse shell, backdoor, ransomware, C2 framework, or info stealer).
    Fix: Remove the malware payload or compromised file entirely. Investigate how it entered the skill and audit all other artifacts for additional indicators of compromise.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 175
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
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 $0.00041 $0.02556
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.01278
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00511
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00256

Measured 8d ago against content hash b97d7246ea4c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host scanned grade A with 0 findings 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.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (scripts/agent.py, scripts/process.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

2 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

.claude/skills/collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host/SKILL.md · 254 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 254 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Collecting Volatile Evidence from Compromised Hosts

When to Use

  • Security incident confirmed and compromised host identified
  • Before system isolation, shutdown, or remediation begins
  • Memory-resident malware suspected (fileless attacks)
  • Need to capture network connections, running processes, and system state
  • Legal proceedings may require forensic evidence preservation
  • Incident requires root cause analysis with volatile data

Prerequisites

  • Forensic collection toolkit on USB or network share (trusted tools)
  • WinPmem/LiME for memory acquisition
  • Write-blocker or forensic workstation for disk imaging
  • Chain of custody documentation forms
  • Secure evidence storage with integrity verification
  • Authorization to collect evidence (legal/HR approval for insider cases)

Workflow

Step 1: Prepare Collection Environment

# Mount forensic USB toolkit (do NOT install tools on compromised system)
# Verify toolkit integrity
sha256sum /mnt/forensic_usb/tools/* > /tmp/toolkit_hashes.txt
diff /mnt/forensic_usb/tools/known_good_hashes.txt /tmp/toolkit_hashes.txt

# Create evidence output directory with timestamps
EVIDENCE_DIR="/mnt/evidence/$(hostname)_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S)"
mkdir -p "$EVIDENCE_DIR"
echo "Collection started: $(date -u)" > "$EVIDENCE_DIR/collection_log.txt"
echo "Collector: $(whoami)" >> "$EVIDENCE_DIR/collection_log.txt"
echo "System: $(hostname)" >> "$EVIDENCE_DIR/collection_log.txt"

Step 2: Capture System Memory (Highest Volatility)

# Windows - WinPmem memory acquisition
winpmem_mini_x64.exe "$EVIDENCE_DIR\memdump_$(hostname).raw"

# Linux - LiME kernel module for memory acquisition
insmod /mnt/forensic_usb/lime.ko "path=$EVIDENCE_DIR/memdump_$(hostname).lime format=lime"

# Linux - Alternative using /proc/kcore
dd if=/proc/kcore of="$EVIDENCE_DIR/kcore_dump.raw" bs=1M

# macOS - osxpmem
osxpmem -o "$EVIDENCE_DIR/memdump_$(hostname).aff4"

# Hash the memory dump immediately
sha256sum "$EVIDENCE_DIR/memdump_"* > "$EVIDENCE_DIR/memory_hash.sha256"

Read the full file on GitHub · 254 lines

Files

What ships with it

7 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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 · 254 lines · 41 tokens per session scan A b97d7246ea4c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

collecting-volatile-evidence-from-compromised-host is a skill published in the GitHub repository 26zl/cybersec-toolkit (54 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 41 tokens to every session and 2,556 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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