hunting-c2-beaconing-with-frequency-analysis

hunting-c2-beaconing-with-frequency-analysis is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack. It costs 73 tokens per session (766 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A network-analysis workflow that looks for computers calling the same destination at regular intervals. It allows for jitter, meaning small timing changes, to find possible command-and-control beacons hidden in normal-looking traffic.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to rank source-and-destination pairs in proxy, firewall, Zeek, or NetFlow logs for periodic callback investigation.
Why use it?
Scheduled callbacks can indicate malware, but software updates and telemetry can look similar. Timing analysis narrows the connections that need reputation and data-volume checks.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to rank source-and-destination pairs in proxy, firewall, Zeek, or NetFlow logs for periodic callback investigation.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/hunting-c2-beaconing-with-frequency-analysis
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 hunting-c2-beaconing-with-frequency-analysis
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 hunting-c2-beaconing-with-frequency-analysis

README.md
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Your own site
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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.

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Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/hunting-c2-beaconing-with-frequency-analysis"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/hunting-c2-beaconing-with-frequency-analysis.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 73 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 766 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 $0.00073 $0.00766
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00383
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00153
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00077

Measured 9d ago against content hash affefba8b85f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

hunting-c2-beaconing-with-frequency-analysis 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 9d 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/hunting-c2-beaconing-with-frequency-analysis/SKILL.md · 96 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 96 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Hunting C2 Beaconing with Frequency Analysis

When to Use

  • You have connection logs (proxy, firewall, Zeek/conn.log, NetFlow) and want to find implants that call home on a schedule.
  • You are testing a hypothesis that a beacon is hiding in normal-looking web traffic.
  • You need to rank source→destination pairs by timing regularity, allowing for jitter.

Do not use pure interval regularity as a verdict — software update checks, telemetry, and keep-alives also beacon; combine timing with destination reputation and data volume.

Prerequisites

  • Connection records with timestamp, source, destination (IP/domain), and ideally bytes, over a window long enough to capture many callbacks (hours to days).
  • A way to enrich destinations (reputation, age, rarity) for follow-up.

Workflow

Step 1: Group and order by pair

Bucket connections by (source, destination) and sort timestamps. Require a minimum count so the interval statistics are meaningful.

Step 2: Compute inter-arrival intervals

Derive deltas between consecutive connections per pair; the interval distribution reveals periodicity.

Step 3: Score regularity with jitter tolerance

A low coefficient of variation (std/mean) of intervals indicates a steady beacon; modern beacons add jitter, so score on tolerance rather than requiring identical intervals.

python scripts/analyst.py beacon conn.json --min-events 8

Step 4: Reduce false positives

Down-rank known update/telemetry destinations and CDNs; up-rank rare/young domains, small fixed payload sizes, and odd ports.

Step 5: Triage and confirm

For top pairs, pull payloads/JA3, destination intel, and host context; confirm via the C2/beacon config skills and escalate.

Validation

  • Top candidates show consistently spaced callbacks (low CV) over many events, not a handful.
  • Known-benign periodic services are filtered or explained.
  • Confirmed beacons corroborate with destination reputation or payload analysis.

Read the full file on GitHub · 96 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. 9d ago First seen · 96 lines · 73 tokens per session scan A affefba8b85f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

hunting-c2-beaconing-with-frequency-analysis is a skill published in the GitHub repository meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack (22 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 73 tokens to every session and 766 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 2026-09-03.

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