unpacking-upx-and-common-packers

unpacking-upx-and-common-packers is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack. It costs 76 tokens per session (851 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A workflow for detecting and unpacking protected or compressed program files so their original code can be inspected. It covers automatic unpacking for UPX and manual recovery when a custom packer hides the code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to identify packers from file structure and entropy, unpack standard UPX samples, or recover custom-packed binaries in an isolated lab.
Why use it?
Packed files can make normal static analysis misleading or ineffective. Unpacking exposes the program’s underlying code for tools such as Ghidra or IDA Pro.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to identify packers from file structure and entropy, unpack standard UPX samples, or recover custom-packed binaries in an isolated lab.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/unpacking-upx-and-common-packers
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 unpacking-upx-and-common-packers
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

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README.md
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<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/unpacking-upx-and-common-packers"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/unpacking-upx-and-common-packers.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 76 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 851 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 $0.00076 $0.00851
Opus 5 $0.00038 $0.00426
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00170
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00085

Measured 9d ago against content hash 2a4e65379e83, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

unpacking-upx-and-common-packers 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/unpacking-upx-and-common-packers/SKILL.md · 102 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 102 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Unpacking UPX and Common Packers

When to Use

  • A sample shows high entropy, few imports, or packer section names, and you need the original code for static analysis or RE.
  • You want to unpack UPX automatically or manually unpack a custom/modified packer.
  • You are preparing a sample for Ghidra/IDA (decompiling packed code is pointless).

Do not use generic unpackers as a guarantee — modified UPX and custom packers defeat upx -d. Fall back to debugger-based manual unpacking.

Prerequisites

  • Packer detection (Detect It Easy, or the bundled section/entropy heuristics).
  • upx for standard UPX; x64dbg + Scylla for manual unpacking (see the x64dbg skill).
  • Isolated lab.

Workflow

Step 1: Detect the packer

python scripts/analyst.py detect sample.bin

Signals: section names (UPX0/UPX1, .aspack, .themida), high section entropy, a tiny import table, and a small .text with a large high-entropy section.

Step 2: Try automated UPX unpacking

If standard UPX:

upx -d -o sample_unpacked.bin sample.bin

If upx -d fails on a UPX-like sample, the header was likely tampered (e.g. UPX! magic or version bytes altered) — repair the marker or unpack manually.

Step 3: Manual unpacking for custom packers

In x64dbg: break on VirtualAlloc/VirtualProtect, run until the unpacked region is written and made executable, find the tail jump to the original entry point (OEP), and dump there.

Step 4: Dump and rebuild imports

Use Scylla to dump the process and reconstruct the Import Address Table (IAT) so the dumped PE loads in a disassembler.

Step 5: Verify the unpacked result

Confirm the dump is a clean PE with a populated import table and readable strings/code.

Validation

  • The unpacked file has restored imports and meaningful strings absent from the packed sample.
  • Entropy of the unpacked .text drops to normal code levels.
  • The disassembler resolves API calls (IAT rebuilt correctly).

Pitfalls

Read the full file on GitHub · 102 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 · 102 lines · 76 tokens per session scan A 2a4e65379e83

Subscribe to this mod's changes

unpacking-upx-and-common-packers is a skill published in the GitHub repository meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack (22 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 76 tokens to every session and 851 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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