identifying-anti-debugging-techniques

identifying-anti-debugging-techniques is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack. It costs 72 tokens per session (825 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A malware-analysis guide for finding anti-debugging checks, which are tricks that make a program behave differently or stop when examined with a debugger. It covers checks involving Windows system data, debugger APIs, timing, exceptions, and self-checks.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to locate these checks in a sample, understand how they affect execution, and make the program return expected values during dynamic analysis.
Why use it?
It helps analysts continue examining samples that try to detect or evade analysis tools.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to locate these checks in a sample, understand how they…

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/identifying-anti-debugging-techniques
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 identifying-anti-debugging-techniques
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 identifying-anti-debugging-techniques

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/identifying-anti-debugging-techniques.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/identifying-anti-debugging-techniques)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/identifying-anti-debugging-techniques"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/identifying-anti-debugging-techniques.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 72 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 825 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 $0.00072 $0.00825
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00413
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00165
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00082

Measured 3d ago against content hash 3ac8a9db5b69, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

identifying-anti-debugging-techniques 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 3d 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/identifying-anti-debugging-techniques/SKILL.md · 99 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 99 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Identifying Anti-Debugging Techniques

When to Use

  • A sample behaves differently (or exits) under a debugger and you need to find the checks.
  • You are stuck at a point where execution diverges when analysis tooling is present.
  • You want to neutralize anti-debug logic to continue dynamic analysis.

Do not use brute removal of every check — some are tied to control flow or decryption keys; faking the expected result is usually safer than deleting the check.

Prerequisites

  • x64dbg (with anti-debug plugins like ScyllaHide) inside the victim VM.
  • A disassembler to locate checks statically.
  • Familiarity with the Windows PEB and debug APIs.

Workflow

Step 1: Enumerate likely checks statically

Scan imports and code for common anti-debug primitives:

python scripts/analyst.py scan sample.bin
API-based   : IsDebuggerPresent, CheckRemoteDebuggerPresent, NtQueryInformationProcess
PEB-based   : BeingDebugged (PEB+0x2), NtGlobalFlag (PEB+0xBC/0x68)
Timing      : rdtsc, GetTickCount/QueryPerformanceCounter deltas around code
Exceptions  : INT3/INT2D, SetUnhandledExceptionFilter, single-step traps
Self-checks : CRC of own code, breakpoint (0xCC) scanning

Step 2: Confirm at runtime

Set breakpoints on the detection APIs and observe how the result is used (a conditional jump that leads to exit vs. real code).

Step 3: Neutralize

Prefer faking results over deletion: force IsDebuggerPresent to return 0, clear the PEB BeingDebugged flag, or use ScyllaHide to hook the common checks automatically. For timing, patch the comparison or reduce measured deltas.

Step 4: Re-run and continue

With checks neutralized, proceed to unpacking/behavior analysis. Re-scan in case later stages add more checks.

Validation

  • After neutralization, execution follows the same path as on a non-debugged run.
  • Faked check results do not break decryption or control flow (no corrupted code paths).
  • The sample reaches and reveals its real behavior.

Read the full file on GitHub · 99 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. 3d ago First seen · 99 lines · 72 tokens per session scan A 3ac8a9db5b69

Subscribe to this mod's changes

identifying-anti-debugging-techniques is a skill published in the GitHub repository meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack (22 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 72 tokens to every session and 825 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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