PWN Reconnaissance

PWN Reconnaissance is a skill for Claude Code from allsmog/pwn-claude-plugin. It costs 68 tokens per session (1,353 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A reconnaissance skill for examining a binary, which is a compiled program, before attempting exploitation. It identifies the file type, processor architecture, security protections, strings, symbols, libraries, and system-call restrictions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to identify a binary's architecture, run protection checks, extract interesting strings and symbols, investigate its C library version, and detect seccomp restrictions.
Why use it?
This initial information shows how the program is built and what defenses or useful clues it contains, helping determine which analysis or security-testing methods may apply.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Needs its repository: it runs a file that does not travel with it, so clone the repository first. The line is ./libc-database/find printf <leaked_printf_offset>.

Part of the pwn-htb plugin — 7 skills, 16 commands, 3 agents, 2 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it to identify a binary's architecture, run protection checks, extract interesting strings and symbols, investigate its C library version, and detect seccomp restrictions.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/allsmog/pwn-claude-plugin
agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/allsmog/pwn-claude-plugin/reconnaissance

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install pwn-htb, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills, 16 commands, 3 agents, 2 hooks.

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 PWN Reconnaissance

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/allsmog/pwn-claude-plugin/reconnaissance/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/allsmog/pwn-claude-plugin/reconnaissance)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/allsmog/pwn-claude-plugin/reconnaissance"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/allsmog/pwn-claude-plugin/reconnaissance/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 PWN Reconnaissance

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/allsmog/pwn-claude-plugin/reconnaissance"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/allsmog/pwn-claude-plugin/reconnaissance.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 68 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,353 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.
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 $0.00068 $0.01353
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00677
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00271
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00135

Measured 10d ago against content hash b1cb201d0b9a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

PWN Reconnaissance 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 10d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/full-recon.sh), 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.

pwn-htb/skills/reconnaissance/SKILL.md · 213 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 213 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

PWN Reconnaissance

Overview

The reconnaissance phase gathers critical information about a target binary before exploitation. This includes identifying architecture, protections, interesting strings, symbols, and potential libc version.

Reconnaissance Checklist

  1. File type and architecture identification
  2. Security protections (checksec)
  3. Interesting strings extraction
  4. Symbol table analysis
  5. Libc identification (if applicable)
  6. Seccomp filter detection

Step 1: File Identification

Identify the binary type and architecture:

file ./binary

Expected output interpretation:

Output Contains Meaning
ELF 64-bit LSB executable x86_64 architecture
ELF 32-bit LSB executable x86 (i386) architecture
dynamically linked Uses shared libraries (libc)
statically linked Self-contained, no libc exploits
not stripped Contains debug symbols
stripped No debug symbols

Step 2: Security Protections

Run checksec to identify protections:

checksec --file=./binary

Or via pwntools:

from pwn import *
elf = ELF('./binary')
print(elf.checksec())

Protection Analysis

Protection Enabled Exploitation Impact
RELRO Partial GOT overwrite possible
RELRO Full No GOT overwrite, use other primitives
Stack Canary Yes Must leak or bypass canary
NX Yes No shellcode on stack, use ROP/ret2libc
PIE Yes Must leak binary base address
FORTIFY Yes Some unsafe functions hardened

Step 3: Strings Extraction

Find interesting strings:

strings -n 8 ./binary | grep -iE '(flag|password|secret|admin|shell|bin/sh|/bin)'

Look for:

  • Format string specifiers (%s, %x, %n)
  • Function names (system, execve)
  • File paths (/bin/sh, /flag)
  • Potential passwords or keys

Step 4: Symbol Analysis

Extract symbols if not stripped:

nm ./binary | grep -E ' [TtWw] ' | head -30

Read the full file on GitHub · 213 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. 10d ago First seen · 213 lines · 68 tokens per session scan A b1cb201d0b9a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

PWN Reconnaissance is a skill published in the GitHub repository allsmog/pwn-claude-plugin (2 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 68 tokens to every session and 1,353 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-31.

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