detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks

detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from adriannoes/awesome-agentic-ai. It costs 36 tokens per session (986 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A security investigation guide for finding DLL side-loading, where a malicious Windows library is placed beside a legitimate application so the application loads it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect DLL load events, signatures, file paths, and application inventories during threat hunting or incident response.
Why use it?
It helps detect attackers hiding malicious code behind trusted, signed programs.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to inspect DLL load events, signatures, file paths, and application inventories during threat hunting or incident response.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/adriannoes/awesome-agentic-ai/detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks
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 adriannoes/awesome-agentic-ai --skill detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/adriannoes/awesome-agentic-ai

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/adriannoes/awesome-agentic-ai/detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/adriannoes/awesome-agentic-ai/detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/adriannoes/awesome-agentic-ai/detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/adriannoes/awesome-agentic-ai/detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks/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.

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Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/adriannoes/awesome-agentic-ai/detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/adriannoes/awesome-agentic-ai/detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 36 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 986 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 pass 7 Sept 2026
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 $0.00036 $0.00986
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.00493
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00197
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00099

Measured 8d ago against content hash 9d54193c34a0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks 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.

cursor-claude-codex/skills/anthropic-cybersecurity-skills/skills/detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks/SKILL.md · 110 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 110 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Detecting DLL Sideloading Attacks

When to Use

  • When investigating potential DLL hijacking in enterprise environments
  • After EDR alerts on unsigned DLLs loaded by signed applications
  • When hunting for APT persistence using legitimate application wrappers
  • During incident response to identify trojanized applications
  • When threat intel indicates DLL sideloading campaigns targeting specific software

Prerequisites

  • EDR with DLL load monitoring (CrowdStrike, MDE, SentinelOne)
  • Sysmon Event ID 7 (Image Loaded) with hash verification
  • Application whitelisting or DLL integrity monitoring
  • Software inventory of legitimate applications and expected DLL paths
  • Code signing verification capabilities

Workflow

  1. Identify Sideloading Targets: Research known vulnerable applications that load DLLs without full path qualification (LOLBAS, DLL-sideload databases).
  2. Monitor DLL Load Events: Query Sysmon Event ID 7 for DLL loads where the DLL path differs from the application's expected directory.
  3. Check DLL Signatures: Flag unsigned or untrusted DLLs loaded by signed executables.
  4. Detect Path Anomalies: Identify legitimate executables running from unusual locations (Temp, AppData, Public) that may be decoy wrappers.
  5. Hash Verification: Compare loaded DLL hashes against known-good versions and threat intel feeds.
  6. Correlate with Process Behavior: Check if the host process exhibits unusual behavior (network connections, child processes) after loading the suspicious DLL.
  7. Document and Remediate: Report sideloading instances, quarantine malicious DLLs, and update detection rules.

Key Concepts

Concept Description
T1574.002 DLL Side-Loading
T1574.001 DLL Search Order Hijacking
T1574.006 Dynamic Linker Hijacking
T1574.008 Path Interception by Search Order Hijacking
DLL Search Order Windows DLL loading priority path
Side-Loading Placing malicious DLL where legitimate app loads it
Phantom DLL DLL that legitimate apps try to load but does not exist
DLL Proxying Malicious DLL forwarding calls to legitimate DLL

Read the full file on GitHub · 110 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 · 110 lines · 36 tokens per session scan A 9d54193c34a0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

detecting-dll-sideloading-attacks is a skill published in the GitHub repository adriannoes/awesome-agentic-ai (57 stars, last pushed 14d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 36 tokens to every session and 986 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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