vm-and-bytecode-reverse

vm-and-bytecode-reverse is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from yaklang/hack-skills. It costs 42 tokens per session (4,195 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to reverse-engineering custom virtual machines and their bytecode. A virtual machine here is a program that reads its own instruction format instead of running ordinary processor instructions directly.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to identify instruction dispatchers, map opcodes, build a disassembler or decompiler, analyze maze-style challenges, and study custom VM protectors.
Why use it?
It helps make protected or challenge-specific programs understandable by reconstructing their operations and instruction rules.

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 · 2,098 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/vm-and-bytecode-reverse
Any agent
npx skills add yaklang/hack-skills --skill vm-and-bytecode-reverse
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 vm-and-bytecode-reverse

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yaklang/hack-skills/vm-and-bytecode-reverse.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/yaklang/hack-skills/vm-and-bytecode-reverse)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/yaklang/hack-skills/vm-and-bytecode-reverse"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yaklang/hack-skills/vm-and-bytecode-reverse.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 42 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,195 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 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 $0.00042 $0.04195
Opus 5 $0.00021 $0.02098
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00839
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00419

Measured 2d ago against content hash 4da387769cea, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

vm-and-bytecode-reverse 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 2d 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.

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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

3 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/vm-and-bytecode-reverse/SKILL.md · 451 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 451 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

SKILL: VM & Bytecode Reverse Engineering — Expert Analysis Playbook

AI LOAD INSTRUCTION: Expert techniques for reversing custom virtual machines and bytecode interpreters. Covers dispatcher identification, opcode mapping, custom ISA reconstruction, disassembler/decompiler writing, maze challenges, and real-world VM protector analysis. Base models often fail to recognize the fetch-decode-execute pattern or attempt to analyze VM bytecode as native code.

Quick identification

Binary Pattern Likely VM Type Start With
while(1) { switch(bytecode[pc]) } Switch-based dispatcher Map each case to an operation
Indirect jump via table jmp [table + opcode*8] Table-based dispatcher Dump jump table, analyze handlers
Nested if-else chain on byte value If-chain dispatcher Same as switch, just different syntax
Stack push/pop dominant operations Stack-based VM Identify push, pop, arithmetic ops
reg[X] = ... array operations Register-based VM Map register indices to operations
2D grid + direction input Maze challenge Extract grid, apply BFS/DFS

1. CUSTOM VM IDENTIFICATION

1.1 Structural Indicators

VM Architecture Components:
┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│  Bytecode Program (data section)│
├─────────────────────────────────┤
│  Program Counter (pc/ip)        │
│  Register File / Stack          │
│  Memory / Data Area             │
├─────────────────────────────────┤
│  Dispatcher Loop                │
│  ├─ Fetch: opcode = code[pc]    │
│  ├─ Decode: lookup handler      │
│  └─ Execute: run handler        │
└─────────────────────────────────┘

Read the full file on GitHub · 451 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. 2d ago First seen · 451 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A 4da387769cea

Subscribe to this mod's changes

vm-and-bytecode-reverse is a skill published in the GitHub repository yaklang/hack-skills (2,098 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 4,195 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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