hunting-cobalt-strike-traffic

hunting-cobalt-strike-traffic is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack. It costs 75 tokens per session (689 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A security-analysis workflow that searches web and process logs for default traces of Cobalt Strike, a penetration-testing tool that attackers also use to control compromised computers. It checks for known beacon URLs, user agents, ports, and named pipes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to triage suspected command-and-control traffic and identify possible Cobalt Strike beacons in HTTP or process telemetry.
Why use it?
Cobalt Strike traffic can blend into ordinary network activity, while its unchanged defaults leave recognizable clues. These clues can prioritize systems for deeper investigation.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to triage suspected command-and-control traffic and identify possible Cobalt Strike beacons in HTTP or process telemetry.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/hunting-cobalt-strike-traffic
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-cobalt-strike-traffic
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-cobalt-strike-traffic

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/hunting-cobalt-strike-traffic"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/hunting-cobalt-strike-traffic.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 75 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 689 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 $0.00075 $0.00689
Opus 5 $0.00037 $0.00345
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00138
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00069

Measured 8d ago against content hash 5691445f7a46, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

hunting-cobalt-strike-traffic 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 8d 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-cobalt-strike-traffic/SKILL.md · 85 lines

What it actually says

Hunting Cobalt Strike Traffic

When to Use

  • You have HTTP request logs (proxy/Zeek http.log) and/or process telemetry and want to detect default-configuration Cobalt Strike beacons.
  • You are triaging suspected C2 using known default artifacts before deeper analysis.

Do not use default-indicator detection as proof — operators customize Malleable C2 profiles. Absence of defaults does not mean no Cobalt Strike. This skill parses telemetry and executes nothing.

Prerequisites

  • HTTP request URIs and/or process/pipe telemetry.

Workflow

Step 1: Detect default stager URIs

python scripts/analyst.py hunt http.csv

Flags request URIs whose path matches the Cobalt Strike default stager checksum8 algorithm (sum of the path characters mod 256 equals 92 for x86 or 93 for x64 stagers).

Step 2: Match default profile artifacts

Flag default user-agents, default URIs (/__utm.gif, /submit.php, /pixel), and default named pipes (\\.\pipe\msagent_*, \\.\pipe\status_*) when present in telemetry.

Step 3: Confirm

Corroborate with beaconing periodicity and destination reputation; pivot to memory/config analysis.

Step 4: Operationalize

Write detections for checksum8 URIs and known default artifacts, accepting they catch defaults only.

Validation

  • checksum8 detection correctly computes the path-character sum mod 256.
  • Default profile artifacts are matched exactly, not by loose substrings.
  • Findings are presented as default-indicator hits, not definitive attribution.

Pitfalls

  • Customized Malleable C2 profiles defeating all default-artifact checks.
  • checksum8 false positives on unrelated short URIs — corroborate with other signals.
  • Treating a single default hit as confirmation without behavioral corroboration.

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. 8d ago First seen · 85 lines · 75 tokens per session scan A 5691445f7a46

Subscribe to this mod's changes

hunting-cobalt-strike-traffic is a skill published in the GitHub repository meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack (22 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 75 tokens to every session and 689 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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