deobfuscating-malicious-powershell

deobfuscating-malicious-powershell is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack. It costs 71 tokens per session (932 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A static-analysis guide for decoding obfuscated malicious PowerShell into its readable commands and final payload. PowerShell is a Windows scripting system, while obfuscation changes code so people and simple scanners cannot easily read it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to decode Base64-encoded commands, reverse altered strings, unpack Base64 and compressed layers, and recover URLs, paths, shellcode, and other indicators. It works from captured command or script text.
Why use it?
Encoded or layered scripts can conceal download addresses, file paths, and later-stage malware. This guide recovers those details without requiring the script to run on a working computer.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to decode Base64-encoded commands, reverse altered strings, unpack Base64 and…

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/deobfuscating-malicious-powershell
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 deobfuscating-malicious-powershell
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 deobfuscating-malicious-powershell

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/deobfuscating-malicious-powershell.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/deobfuscating-malicious-powershell)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/deobfuscating-malicious-powershell"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/deobfuscating-malicious-powershell.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 71 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 932 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 $0.00071 $0.00932
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00466
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00186
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00093

Measured 7d ago against content hash 7aa22a56e157, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

deobfuscating-malicious-powershell 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 7d 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/deobfuscating-malicious-powershell/SKILL.md · 112 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 112 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Deobfuscating Malicious PowerShell

When to Use

  • You captured an obfuscated PowerShell command from a log, maldoc, or phishing payload.
  • You need to recover the real intent: download URLs, dropped paths, shellcode, or next stage.
  • You are unrolling layered encoding (base64 → gzip → IEX) to reach the final script.

Do not use Invoke-Expression or run the script to "see what it does" on a working host. Decode statically; only execute in the isolated lab with logging if dynamic confirmation is required.

Prerequisites

  • Python (bundled script handles base64/gzip/deflate and common transforms), or a sandbox.
  • The command/script text captured as a string.

Safety & Handling

  • Never pipe attacker PowerShell into a live shell. Replace IEX/Invoke-Expression with output (print) when transforming.
  • Treat decoded URLs/IPs as live; defang before sharing.

Workflow

Step 1: Decode -EncodedCommand

-EncodedCommand (-enc) is base64 of UTF-16LE. Decode it first:

python scripts/analyst.py decode --encodedcommand "<base64>"

Step 2: Identify the obfuscation style

Common patterns:

String reversal      : [array]::Reverse / -join with [-1..]
Format operator      : ("{1}{0}" -f 'b','a') -> 'ab'
Char codes           : [char]104 + [char]105
Concatenation/splits : 'po'+'wer'+'shell', -split / -replace tricks
Backtick/casing noise : I`E`X, iEx, &('i'+'ex')

Step 3: Unroll encoding layers

Resolve nested FromBase64String, gzip/deflate (IO.Compression), and re-IEX layers until you reach plain script. The script peels base64/gzip layers automatically.

python scripts/analyst.py deobfuscate payload.ps1

Step 4: Neutralize execution sinks

Replace IEX, Invoke-Expression, &, and .Invoke() with a print so the recovered script is rendered, not run.

Step 5: Extract IOCs

Pull DownloadString/DownloadFile URLs, C2 hosts, dropped paths, and any embedded base64 shellcode for separate analysis.

Read the full file on GitHub · 112 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. 7d ago First seen · 112 lines · 71 tokens per session scan A 7aa22a56e157

Subscribe to this mod's changes

deobfuscating-malicious-powershell is a skill published in the GitHub repository meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack (22 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 71 tokens to every session and 932 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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