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.
npx skills add autohandai/community-skills --skill analyzing-cobalt-strike-beacon-configurationgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/autohandai/community-skillsWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/autohandai/community-skills/analyzing-cobalt-strike-beacon-configuration)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/autohandai/community-skills/analyzing-cobalt-strike-beacon-configuration"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/autohandai/community-skills/analyzing-cobalt-strike-beacon-configuration/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/autohandai/community-skills/analyzing-cobalt-strike-beacon-configuration"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/autohandai/community-skills/analyzing-cobalt-strike-beacon-configuration.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00042 | $0.03205 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00021 | $0.01603 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00008 | $0.00641 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00004 | $0.00320 |
Grade A, and why
analyzing-cobalt-strike-beacon-configuration 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 12d ago.
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.
This is a copy
91% identical to analyzing-cobalt-strike-beacon-configuration — 36 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 361 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Analyzing Cobalt Strike Beacon Configuration
Overview
Cobalt Strike is a commercial adversary simulation tool widely abused by threat actors for post-exploitation operations. Beacon payloads contain embedded configuration data that reveals C2 server addresses, communication protocols, sleep intervals, jitter values, malleable C2 profile settings, watermark identifiers, and encryption keys. Extracting this configuration from PE files, shellcode, or memory dumps is critical for incident responders to map attacker infrastructure and attribute campaigns. The beacon configuration is XOR-encoded using a single byte (0x69 for version 3, 0x2e for version 4) and stored in a Type-Length-Value (TLV) format within the .data section.
Prerequisites
- Python 3.9+ with
dissect.cobaltstrike,pefile,yara-python - SentinelOne CobaltStrikeParser (
parse_beacon_config.py) - Hex editor (010 Editor, HxD) for manual inspection
- Understanding of PE file format and XOR encoding
- Memory dump acquisition tools (Volatility3, WinDbg)
- Network analysis tools (Wireshark) for C2 traffic correlation
Key Concepts
Beacon Configuration Structure
Cobalt Strike beacons store their configuration as a blob of TLV (Type-Length-Value) entries within the .data section of the PE. Stageless beacons XOR the entire beacon code with a 4-byte key. The configuration blob itself uses a single-byte XOR key. Each TLV entry contains a 2-byte type identifier (e.g., 0x0001 for BeaconType, 0x0008 for C2Server), a 2-byte length, and variable-length data.
Malleable C2 Profiles
The beacon configuration encodes the malleable C2 profile that dictates HTTP request/response transformations, including URI paths, headers, metadata encoding (Base64, NetBIOS), and data transforms. Analyzing these settings reveals how the beacon disguises its traffic to blend with legitimate web traffic.
Watermark and License Identification
Each Cobalt Strike license embeds a unique watermark (4-byte integer) into generated beacons. Extracting the watermark can link multiple beacons to the same operator or cracked license. Known watermark databases maintained by threat intelligence providers map watermarks to specific threat actors or leaked license keys.
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.
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.
- 12d ago First seen · 361 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A d31f07ccc103
analyzing-cobalt-strike-beacon-configuration is a skill published in the GitHub repository autohandai/community-skills (11 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 3,205 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 91% identical to analyzing-cobalt-strike-beacon-configuration, differing in 36 lines, and is treated as a copy.
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Extract and analyze Cobalt Strike beacon configuration from PE files and memory dumps to identify C2 infrastructure, malleable profiles, and operator tradecraft.
analyzing-cobalt-strike-beacon-configuration
Extract and analyze Cobalt Strike beacon configuration from PE files and memory dumps to identify C2 infrastructure, malleable profiles, and operator tradecraft.
analyzing-cobalt-strike-beacon-configuration
Extract and analyze Cobalt Strike beacon configuration from PE files and memory dumps to identify C2 infrastructure, malleable profiles, and operator tradecraft.