conducting-external-reconnaissance-with-osint

conducting-external-reconnaissance-with-osint is a skill for Claude Code from 26zl/cybersec-toolkit. It costs 96 tokens per session (2,690 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An external reconnaissance procedure that gathers publicly available information, known as OSINT, about an organization without directly probing its systems.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before a penetration test or red-team exercise to map domains, certificates, public services, email patterns, and other publicly visible information. It must stay within written authorization and privacy laws.
Why use it?
It helps reveal the organization's internet-facing footprint, including forgotten assets, exposed credentials, leaked documents, employee details, and possible shadow IT.

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 before a penetration test or red-team exercise to map domains, certificates, public services, email patterns, and other publicly visible information. It must stay within written authorization and privacy laws.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/26zl/cybersec-toolkit/conducting-external-reconnaissance-with-osint
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 conducting-external-reconnaissance-with-osint
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 conducting-external-reconnaissance-with-osint

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/26zl/cybersec-toolkit/conducting-external-reconnaissance-with-osint/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/26zl/cybersec-toolkit/conducting-external-reconnaissance-with-osint)
Your own site
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<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/26zl/cybersec-toolkit/conducting-external-reconnaissance-with-osint"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/26zl/cybersec-toolkit/conducting-external-reconnaissance-with-osint.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 96 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,690 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. 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: 1 finding, 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 Privilege Escalation · line 178
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
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 $0.00096 $0.02690
Opus 5 $0.00048 $0.01345
Sonnet 5 $0.00019 $0.00538
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00269

Measured 8d ago against content hash eca75ef71dd3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

conducting-external-reconnaissance-with-osint scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 1 executable file (scripts/agent.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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

- `crt.sh` certificate transparency log queries: `curl -s "https://crt.sh/?q=%25.target.com&output=json" | jq -r '.[].name_value' | sort -u`
Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

.claude/skills/conducting-external-reconnaissance-with-osint/SKILL.md · 192 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 192 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Conducting External Reconnaissance with OSINT

When to Use

  • Performing the initial reconnaissance phase of a penetration test to gather intelligence before active scanning
  • Mapping an organization's external attack surface to identify unknown or shadow IT assets
  • Collecting employee information, email formats, and organizational structure for social engineering campaigns
  • Identifying exposed credentials, leaked data, or sensitive documents published on the internet
  • Scoping the breadth of an organization's digital footprint prior to a red team engagement

Do not use for stalking, harassment, or unauthorized surveillance of individuals. OSINT gathering must be conducted within the scope of an authorized engagement and comply with applicable privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA).

Prerequisites

  • Written authorization to perform reconnaissance against the target organization
  • Dedicated research workstation with a VPN or Tor for anonymized queries when required
  • OSINT framework tools installed: Amass, theHarvester, Shodan CLI, Recon-ng, SpiderFoot
  • API keys for Shodan, Censys, SecurityTrails, Hunter.io, VirusTotal, and GitHub for enhanced results
  • Disposable email accounts for accessing services that require registration during research

Workflow

Step 1: Domain and DNS Enumeration

Enumerate all domains, subdomains, and DNS records associated with the target:

  • Root domain identification: Start with the primary domain and identify all related domains through reverse WHOIS lookups on registrant name, email, and organization using whoxy.com or domaintools.com
  • Subdomain enumeration: Run multiple tools for comprehensive coverage:
    • amass enum -passive -d target.com -o amass_subs.txt for passive subdomain discovery from 40+ data sources
    • subfinder -d target.com -all -o subfinder_subs.txt for fast passive enumeration
    • crt.sh certificate transparency log queries: curl -s "https://crt.sh/?q=%25.target.com&output=json" | jq -r '.[].name_value' | sort -u
  • DNS record analysis: Query for all record types: dig target.com ANY, check for SPF, DKIM, DMARC records that reveal email infrastructure, and enumerate MX records to identify email providers
  • Zone transfer attempt: dig axfr @ns1.target.com target.com to check for misconfigured DNS servers
  • Consolidate results: Merge, deduplicate, and resolve all discovered subdomains to IP addresses. Map IP addresses to ASN and hosting providers.

Read the full file on GitHub · 192 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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 · 192 lines · 96 tokens per session scan A eca75ef71dd3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

conducting-external-reconnaissance-with-osint is a skill published in the GitHub repository 26zl/cybersec-toolkit (54 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 96 tokens to every session and 2,690 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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