analyzing-loaders-and-droppers

analyzing-loaders-and-droppers is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack. It costs 69 tokens per session (695 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A static-analysis guide for loaders and droppers, which are programs that prepare or deliver a later malware stage. It looks for embedded, appended, or downloaded payloads and the code that decodes and runs them.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find hidden payloads, decode or decrypt routines, download locations, process execution, injection, scheduled tasks, and DLL side-loading.
Why use it?
It reveals a multi-step infection chain without running the sample or fetching live malware.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to find hidden payloads, decode or decrypt routines, download locations, process execution, injection, scheduled tasks, and DLL side-loading.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/analyzing-loaders-and-droppers
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 meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack --skill analyzing-loaders-and-droppers
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack

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 analyzing-loaders-and-droppers

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/analyzing-loaders-and-droppers/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/analyzing-loaders-and-droppers)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/analyzing-loaders-and-droppers"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/analyzing-loaders-and-droppers/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 analyzing-loaders-and-droppers

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/analyzing-loaders-and-droppers"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/analyzing-loaders-and-droppers.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 69 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 695 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 $0.00069 $0.00695
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00347
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00139
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00069

Measured 11d ago against content hash 2a7eea3911f2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

analyzing-loaders-and-droppers 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 11d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/analyst.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.

skills/analyzing-loaders-and-droppers/SKILL.md · 91 lines

What it actually says

Analyzing Loaders and Droppers

When to Use

  • You have a first-stage loader/dropper and need to find the next stage: an embedded resource, an appended overlay, or a download URL.
  • You need to identify the decode/decrypt routine and the execution mechanism (process creation, injection, scheduled task, DLL side-loading).

Do not use this to run the loader and fetch live stages — characterize staging statically and retrieve next stages only in an isolated sandbox.

Prerequisites

  • The loader/dropper sample (read inertly).

Safety & Handling

  • Read bytes statically; defang download URLs; never execute to pull live payloads.

Workflow

Step 1: Locate staged payloads

python scripts/analyst.py stage sample.bin

Detects embedded PE/archive signatures, an appended overlay beyond the PE's mapped size, large high-entropy blobs, and download URLs.

Step 2: Identify decode/execution mechanism

Scan imports/strings for decode APIs (CryptDecrypt, base64), download APIs (URLDownloadToFile, WinHttp, InternetReadFile), and execution (CreateProcess, ShellExecute, WinExec, side-loading hints).

Step 3: Map the delivery chain

Document stage-1 → decode → stage-2 → execution and map each step to ATT&CK.

Step 4: Defang and report

Defang URLs and produce IOCs for the staging infrastructure.

Validation

  • Embedded/overlay stages are confirmed by signature or entropy, with offsets recorded.
  • Download URLs and execution mechanism are identified from imports/strings.
  • The multi-stage chain maps cleanly to ATT&CK techniques.

Pitfalls

  • Treating a benign overlay (installer data, signature) as a payload without corroboration.
  • Missing stages fetched at runtime when no URL is in plaintext (obfuscated/encoded).
  • Confusing the decode routine for the payload itself.

References

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. 11d ago First seen · 91 lines · 69 tokens per session scan A 2a7eea3911f2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

analyzing-loaders-and-droppers is a skill published in the GitHub repository meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack (22 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 69 tokens to every session and 695 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 2026-08-30.

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