Agent skill

Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas

by mukul975 in mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills

Detect Living Off the Land Binaries (LOLBins/LOLBAS) abuse including certutil, regsvr32, mshta, and rundll32 via process telemetry, Sigma rules, and parent-child process analysis with Sysmon…

Apache-2.0Auto-check passedSecurity

Install Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas

skills CLI
$ npx skills add mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills --skill detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas .claude/skills/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas
GitHub stars
34k
Token cost
~787 tokens
SKILL.md length
293 words
Files
4 (incl. scripts, references)
Skills in repo
644
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
Apache-2.0

At a glance

Detect Living Off the Land Binaries (LOLBins/LOLBAS) abuse including certutil, regsvr32, mshta, and rundll32 via process telemetry, Sigma rules, and parent-child process analysis with Sysmon…

  • Works in 6 steps: Establish LOLBin Watchlist — Build a… → Collect Process Telemetry — Ingest… → Build Sigma Detection Rules — Create… → …
  • Hunting for adversaries abusing built-in Windows binaries to download
  • SKILL.md covers Overview, When to Use, Prerequisites and Steps, plus 1 more section
  • Runs Python scripts from its folder

What it does

Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas is an agent skill from mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills. Detect Living Off the Land Binaries (LOLBins/LOLBAS) abuse including certutil, regsvr32, mshta, and rundll32 via process telemetry, Sigma rules, and parent-child process analysis with Sysmon endpoint data. Use when hunting for adversaries abusing built-in Windows binaries to download, execute, or proxy malicious code while evading traditional executable-based detection.

Its SKILL.md is about 790 tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 5 other files, including scripts and reference files (for example `references/api-reference.md` and `scripts/agent.py`).

It sits in Security. The repository describes itself as: 817 structured cybersecurity skills for AI agents · Mapped to 6 frameworks: MITRE ATT&CK, NIST CSF 2.0, MITRE ATLAS, D3FEND, NIST AI RMF & MITRE F3 (Fight Fraud) · agentskills.io…. The licence is Apache-2.0.

When your agent uses it

  • Hunting for adversaries abusing built-in Windows binaries to download
  • Proxy malicious code while evading traditional executable-based detection

Example prompts

  • “/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas”

Requirements

  • Python 3

Workflow steps

6 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Establish LOLBin Watchlist — Build a prioritized list of monitored binaries (certutil, mshta, regsvr32, rundll32, msbuild, installutil…
  2. Collect Process Telemetry — Ingest Sysmon Event ID 1 (Process Create) and Windows 4688 events with full command-line capture
  3. Build Sigma Detection Rules — Create Sigma rules matching suspicious command-line arguments, network activity, and parent-child process…
  4. Analyze Parent-Child Relationships — Flag unexpected parent processes spawning LOLBins (e.g., Excel spawning certutil, Word spawning mshta)
  5. Score and Prioritize Alerts — Apply risk scoring based on argument anomaly, parent process, execution path, and network indicators
  6. Generate Detection Report — Produce a structured report of all LOLBin abuse detections with MITRE ATT&CK mapping

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 54a7988. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    Ships 1 file in scripts/ (Python), which the agent can run.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas loads about 787 tokens when it runs, and up to ~1.3k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 104 tokens; SKILL.md has 293 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~104
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~787
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~1.3k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills at commit 54a7988, republished under its Apache-2.0 licence (© mukul975). 293 words, ~787 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 3 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas
description
Detect Living Off the Land Binaries (LOLBins/LOLBAS) abuse including certutil, regsvr32, mshta, and rundll32 via process telemetry, Sigma rules, and parent-child process analysis with Sysmon endpoint data. Use when hunting for adversaries abusing built-in Windows binaries to download, execute, or proxy malicious code while evading traditional executable-based detection.
domain
cybersecurity
subdomain
threat-detection
tags
lolbas, lolbins, sigma-rules, process-monitoring, sysmon, endpoint-detection, threat-hunting
version
1.0
author
mahipal
license
Apache-2.0
d3fend_techniques
Executable Denylisting, Execution Isolation, File Metadata Consistency Validation, Application Protocol Command Analysis, Content Format Conversion
nist_csf
DE.CM-01, DE.AE-02, DE.AE-06, ID.RA-05
mitre_attack
T1078, T1190, T1059

Detecting Living Off the Land with LOLBAS

Overview

Living Off the Land Binaries, Scripts, and Libraries (LOLBAS) are legitimate system utilities abused by attackers to execute malicious actions while evading detection. This skill covers detecting abuse of certutil.exe, regsvr32.exe, mshta.exe, rundll32.exe, msbuild.exe, and other LOLBins using process telemetry from Sysmon and Windows Event Logs, combined with Sigma rule-based detection.

When to Use

  • When investigating security incidents that require detecting living off the land with lolbas
  • When building detection rules or threat hunting queries for this domain
  • When SOC analysts need structured procedures for this analysis type
  • When validating security monitoring coverage for related attack techniques

Prerequisites

  • Sysmon or Windows Security Event Log (Event ID 4688) with command-line logging enabled
  • Sigma rule conversion tool (sigmac or sigma-cli)
  • SIEM platform (Splunk, Elastic, or similar) for log ingestion
  • Python 3.8+ with pySigma library
  • LOLBAS project reference database

Steps

  1. Establish LOLBin Watchlist — Build a prioritized list of monitored binaries (certutil, mshta, regsvr32, rundll32, msbuild, installutil, cmstp, wmic, bitsadmin)
  2. Collect Process Telemetry — Ingest Sysmon Event ID 1 (Process Create) and Windows 4688 events with full command-line capture
  3. Build Sigma Detection Rules — Create Sigma rules matching suspicious command-line arguments, network activity, and parent-child process anomalies for each LOLBin
  4. Analyze Parent-Child Relationships — Flag unexpected parent processes spawning LOLBins (e.g., Excel spawning certutil, Word spawning mshta)
  5. Score and Prioritize Alerts — Apply risk scoring based on argument anomaly, parent process, execution path, and network indicators
  6. Generate Detection Report — Produce a structured report of all LOLBin abuse detections with MITRE ATT&CK mapping

Expected Output

  • JSON report listing detected LOLBin abuse events with severity scores
  • MITRE ATT&CK technique mapping for each detection (T1218, T1105, T1140, T1127)
  • Parent-child process anomaly analysis
  • Sigma rule match details with raw event data

© mukul975, Apache-2.0. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 3 other files (scripts, references) in skills/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas of mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills.

  • SKILL.md
  • LICENSE
  • references/api-reference.md
  • scripts/agent.py

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 54a7988

Compare with similar skills

Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas this skillmukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills34k—~787Automated safety check: PassApache-2.0
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Skill Scannergetsentry/skills1k4 repos~2.5kAutomated safety check: WarnApache-2.0
Serenity Aleabitoreddityan-labs/serenity-aleabitoreddit4811 repos~3.3kAutomated safety check: PassNone
Security Alert Triageelastic/agent-skills5921 repos~3.5kAutomated safety check: NotesApache-2.0
Shiro Attack CLISummerSec/ShiroAttack22.6k—~945Automated safety check: PassMIT

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Categories

Questions about Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas

What does Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas do?

Detect Living Off the Land Binaries (LOLBins/LOLBAS) abuse including certutil, regsvr32, mshta, and rundll32 via process telemetry, Sigma rules, and parent-child process analysis with Sysmon…. Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas is an agent skill from mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills. Detect Living Off the Land Binaries (LOLBins/LOLBAS) abuse including certutil, regsvr32, mshta, and rundll32 via process telemetry, Sigma rules, and parent-child process analysis with Sysmon endpoint data.

When should I use Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas?

Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas fits situations like: hunting for adversaries abusing built-in Windows binaries to download; proxy malicious code while evading traditional executable-based detection.

How do I install Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills --skill detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas in mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills) into .claude/skills/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas in Codex?

Run `npx skills add mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills --skill detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas in mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills) into .agents/skills/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills --skill detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas, .gemini/skills/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas, .github/skills/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas and .opencode/skills/detecting-living-off-the-land-with-lolbas in your project.

What does Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas needs Python for the scripts in its folder. Our summary lists: Python 3.

Does Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. The check reads SKILL.md only: the scripts in the folder are not scanned, so read them before running anything.

What licence does Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas use?

Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas is published under the Apache-2.0 licence (declared in SKILL.md). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas use?

About 787 tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 3.1k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 535 tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas: Deepsec Documentation Guide (vercel-labs/deepsec, 8.1k stars), Skill Scanner (getsentry/skills, 1k stars), Serenity Aleabitoreddit (yan-labs/serenity-aleabitoreddit, 481 stars) and Security Alert Triage (elastic/agent-skills, 592 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Detecting Living Off The Land With Lolbas?

mukul975 (a GitHub user) maintains it in mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills, which has 34,116 GitHub stars. The repository holds 644 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on August 31, 2026.

Source: mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.