extracting-cobalt-strike-beacon-config

extracting-cobalt-strike-beacon-config is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack. It costs 81 tokens per session (906 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A static-analysis workflow for reading the configuration of a Cobalt Strike Beacon, a payload commonly used to simulate or conduct command-and-control activity. It decodes the embedded settings and reports servers, communication details, timing, watermark, and named pipes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to examine a Beacon file, DLL, shellcode blob, or memory dump and recover command-and-control details, sleep and jitter values, profile settings, watermarks, and pipe names.
Why use it?
Beacon settings are packed and encoded inside the payload, making them difficult to read directly. Extracting them can provide investigation clues without running the Beacon.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to examine a Beacon file, DLL, shellcode blob, or memory dump and recover command-and-control details, sleep and jitter values, profile settings, watermarks, and pipe names.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/extracting-cobalt-strike-beacon-config
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 extracting-cobalt-strike-beacon-config
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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README.md
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<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/extracting-cobalt-strike-beacon-config"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/extracting-cobalt-strike-beacon-config.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 81 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 906 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 $0.00081 $0.00906
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.00453
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00181
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00091

Measured 11d ago against content hash 42f1803133f2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

extracting-cobalt-strike-beacon-config 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/extracting-cobalt-strike-beacon-config/SKILL.md · 110 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 110 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Extracting Cobalt Strike Beacon Config

When to Use

  • You have a suspected Cobalt Strike Beacon (PE, DLL, shellcode, or extracted blob) and need its configuration.
  • You want C2 servers, the malleable profile shape, sleep/jitter, watermark, and named pipes.
  • You are building network IOCs and attribution leads from a beacon.

Do not use an extracted config alone for hard attribution — watermarks can be shared or cracked. Treat it as one signal among several.

Prerequisites

  • The beacon payload (or a memory dump containing it) in neutralized form inside the lab.
  • Familiarity with Cobalt Strike's encoded config block (commonly XOR-encoded with 0x2e in older versions, 0x69 in others; varies by version).

Safety & Handling

  • Static extraction only; do not run the beacon.
  • Defang recovered C2 hosts/URIs before sharing.

Workflow

Step 1: Locate the encoded config block

Beacon stores settings as a packed, XOR-encoded table of TLV-like entries. Brute the single-byte XOR key by scanning for the decoded table's known opening bytes (the first setting index/type/length pattern).

Step 2: Decode and parse settings

Once the key is found, walk the entries. Each has an index (setting type), a type (short/int/string), and a length. The script decodes and maps known indices:

python scripts/analyst.py parse beacon.bin

Step 3: Recover key fields

Pull the high-value settings:

C2 servers / GET-URI / POST-URI    -> network IOCs
User-Agent                         -> detection signal
Sleep time / jitter                -> beacon cadence
Watermark                          -> license/team grouping lead
Pipe name / process-inject targets -> host IOCs
Spawn-to / DNS settings            -> behavior

Step 4: Interpret the malleable profile

The URIs, headers, and transform settings reveal which malleable C2 profile the operator used (e.g. masquerading as a known web service) — useful for network detection.

Step 5: Build IOCs

Read the full file on GitHub · 110 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. 11d ago First seen · 110 lines · 81 tokens per session scan A 42f1803133f2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

extracting-cobalt-strike-beacon-config is a skill published in the GitHub repository meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack (22 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 81 tokens to every session and 906 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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