salt-typhoon-earth-estries

salt-typhoon-earth-estries is a skill for Claude Code from PurpleAILAB/Decepticon. It costs 66 tokens per session (7,501 once invoked), scanned D, original, Apache-2.0.

A cyber-threat profile of Salt Typhoon, also known by several other names, described as a China-backed espionage group targeting telecommunications and critical infrastructure. It documents the group's targets, tools, vulnerabilities, and operating methods.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to research Salt Typhoon, map its activity to attack techniques, and prepare adversary-emulation or detection work.
Why use it?
It gives security teams a structured picture of the group's behavior for threat assessment and defensive planning.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Good fit Use it to research Salt Typhoon, map its activity to attack techniques, and prepare adversary-emulation or detection work.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/purpleailab/decepticon/salt-typhoon
About the project

Decepticon is an autonomous red-team agent that coordinates AI agents, security tools, sandboxes, and supporting services for authorized cybersecurity assessments. Security researchers and red teams can run it through its Docker stack, cloud service, command-line interface, or Python SDK, with the catalogue entries representing its available skills.

PurpleAILAB/Decepticon · 5,471 stars · on GitHub · decepticon.red

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 PurpleAILAB/Decepticon --skill salt-typhoon
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PurpleAILAB/Decepticon

Made for: Claude Code.

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 salt-typhoon-earth-estries

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/purpleailab/decepticon/salt-typhoon/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/purpleailab/decepticon/salt-typhoon)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/purpleailab/decepticon/salt-typhoon"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/purpleailab/decepticon/salt-typhoon/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 salt-typhoon-earth-estries

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/purpleailab/decepticon/salt-typhoon"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/purpleailab/decepticon/salt-typhoon.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 66 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 7,501 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan D 2 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 $0.00066 $0.07501
Opus 5 $0.00033 $0.03750
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.01500
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00750

Measured 10d ago against content hash 4907b970eb58, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade D, and why

salt-typhoon-earth-estries scanned grade D with 2 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 10d ago.

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.

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

- **T1136 / T1136.001** — Create account (local account): creating local users on network devices via router configuration modification and on IOS XR via `/etc/shadow` and `/etc/passwd` modification, with sudo privileges

Reaches for credential fileshighPrivilege escalation

SSH keys, cloud credentials, git-credentials, .npmrc, /etc/shadow: reading these is how a config file becomes a credential leak.

- **T1136 / T1136.001** — Create account (local account): creating local users on network devices via router configuration modification and on IOS XR via `/etc/shadow` and `/etc/passwd` modification, with sudo privileges
packages/decepticon/decepticon/skills/shared/adversary-emulation/salt-typhoon/SKILL.md · 196 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 196 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Salt Typhoon (Earth Estries, GhostEmperor, FamousSparrow) — Adversary Emulation Profile

Salt Typhoon (MITRE ATT&CK G1045) is a People's Republic of China (PRC) state-backed cyber-espionage group that has been active since at least 2019, with operations traced back to 2021 targeting network infrastructure worldwide. The group is best known for its sustained, large-scale compromises of major U.S. and global telecommunications providers and ISPs, exploiting edge network devices — particularly Cisco IOS XE routers — for long-term covert access. Salt Typhoon is characterized by its focus on network-layer operations (router compromise, GRE/IPsec tunneling, traffic interception via SPAN/ERSPAN), heavy use of living-off-the-land techniques on network devices, a broad custom malware arsenal (DEMODEX kernel rootkit, GhostSpider modular backdoor, SnappyBee/Deed RAT, Crowdoor, ZINGDOOR, HemiGate, MASOL RAT), and exploitation of N-day vulnerabilities in edge appliances from Cisco, Ivanti, Fortinet, Sophos, and Palo Alto Networks. The group's operations ultimately enable Chinese intelligence services to identify and track targets' communications and movements globally.

Attribution & motivation

  • Sponsor / nation: People's Republic of China — linked to the Ministry of State Security (MSS) and multiple China-based entities including Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology Co. Ltd., Beijing Huanyu Tianqiong Information Technology Co. Ltd., and Sichuan Zhixin Ruijie Network Technology Co. Ltd. These companies provide cyber-related products and services to the PLA and MSS. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Sichuan Juxinhe for Salt Typhoon activity in January 2025.
  • Motivation: Primarily strategic intelligence collection (espionage) — interception of telecommunications metadata and content, tracking of intelligence targets' communications and movements. Secondary motivation includes pre-positioning in critical infrastructure for potential future disruptive operations, consistent with broader PRC cyber strategy.
  • Attribution confidence: High. Backed by a joint 23-nation CISA/NSA/FBI advisory (AA25-239A, August 2025), U.S. Treasury OFAC sanctions, Cisco Talos technical analysis, and consistent named vendor reporting (Microsoft, Trend Micro, Kaspersky, ESET, Mandiant).

Read the full file on GitHub · 196 lines

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. 10d ago First seen · 196 lines · 66 tokens per session scan D 4907b970eb58

Subscribe to this mod's changes

salt-typhoon-earth-estries is a skill published in the GitHub repository PurpleAILAB/Decepticon (5,471 stars, last pushed 10d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 66 tokens to every session and 7,501 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it D with 2 findings (asks for root, reaches for credential files). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.