Agent skill

Hunting For Unusual Network Connections

by mukul975 in mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills

Runs a hypothesis-driven threat hunt for command-and-control activity (T1071) by querying SIEM/EDR network telemetry for anomalous outbound traffic, rare destinations, non-standard ports, and…

Apache-2.0Auto-check passedSecurity

Install Hunting For Unusual Network Connections

skills CLI
$ npx skills add mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills --skill hunting-for-unusual-network-connections -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills hunting-for-unusual-network-connections --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/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections .claude/skills/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections && 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
hunting-for-unusual-network-connections
GitHub stars
34k
Token cost
~914 tokens
SKILL.md length
300 words
Files
8 (incl. scripts, references, assets)
Skills in repo
644
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
Apache-2.0

At a glance

Runs a hypothesis-driven threat hunt for command-and-control activity (T1071) by querying SIEM/EDR network telemetry for anomalous outbound traffic, rare destinations, non-standard ports, and…

  • Works in 7 steps: Formulate Hypothesis: Define a testable… → Identify Data Sources: Determine which… → Execute Queries: Run detection queries… → …
  • Hunting for beaconing/C2 traffic
  • SKILL.md covers When to Use, Prerequisites, Workflow and Key Concepts, plus 3 more sections
  • Runs Python scripts from its folder

What it does

Hunting For Unusual Network Connections is an agent skill from mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills. Runs a hypothesis-driven threat hunt for command-and-control activity (T1071) by querying SIEM/EDR network telemetry for anomalous outbound traffic, rare destinations, non-standard ports, and unusual connection frequencies from endpoints. Use when hunting for beaconing/C2 traffic, after threat intel flags suspicious infrastructure, or when alerts fire on anomalous connections.

Its SKILL.md is about 910 tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 10 other files, including scripts, reference files and assets (for example `assets/template.md`, `references/api-reference.md` and `references/standards.md`).

It sits in Security, covering Security operations and Red teaming and adversary simulation. 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 beaconing/C2 traffic
  • After threat intel flags suspicious infrastructure
  • Alerts fire on anomalous connections

Example prompts

  • “/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections”

Requirements

  • Python 3

Workflow steps

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

  1. Formulate Hypothesis: Define a testable hypothesis based on threat intelligence or ATT&CK gap analysis.
  2. Identify Data Sources: Determine which logs and telemetry are needed to validate or refute the hypothesis.
  3. Execute Queries: Run detection queries against SIEM and EDR platforms to collect relevant events.
  4. Analyze Results: Examine query results for anomalies, correlating across multiple data sources.
  5. Validate Findings: Distinguish true positives from false positives through contextual analysis.
  6. Correlate Activity: Link findings to broader attack chains and threat actor TTPs.
  7. Document and Report: Record findings, update detection rules, and recommend response actions.

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 2 files 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

Hunting For Unusual Network Connections loads about 914 tokens when it runs, and up to ~2.6k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 105 tokens; SKILL.md has 300 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~105
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~914
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~2.6k

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). 300 words, ~914 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 7 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
hunting-for-unusual-network-connections
description
Runs a hypothesis-driven threat hunt for command-and-control activity (T1071) by querying SIEM/EDR network telemetry for anomalous outbound traffic, rare destinations, non-standard ports, and unusual connection frequencies from endpoints. Use when hunting for beaconing/C2 traffic, after threat intel flags suspicious infrastructure, or when alerts fire on anomalous connections.
domain
cybersecurity
subdomain
threat-hunting
tags
threat-hunting, mitre-attack, network-analysis, c2, anomaly-detection, proactive-detection
version
1.0
author
mahipal
license
Apache-2.0
d3fend_techniques
File Metadata Consistency Validation, Certificate Analysis, Application Protocol Command Analysis, Content Format Conversion, File Content Analysis
nist_csf
DE.CM-01, DE.AE-02, DE.AE-07, ID.RA-05
mitre_attack
T1046, T1057, T1082, T1083, T1071

Hunting For Unusual Network Connections

When to Use

  • When proactively hunting for indicators of hunting for unusual network connections in the environment
  • After threat intelligence indicates active campaigns using these techniques
  • During incident response to scope compromise related to these techniques
  • When EDR or SIEM alerts trigger on related indicators
  • During periodic security assessments and purple team exercises

Prerequisites

  • EDR platform with process and network telemetry (CrowdStrike, MDE, SentinelOne)
  • SIEM with relevant log data ingested (Splunk, Elastic, Sentinel)
  • Sysmon deployed with comprehensive configuration
  • Windows Security Event Log forwarding enabled
  • Threat intelligence feeds for IOC correlation

Workflow

  1. Formulate Hypothesis: Define a testable hypothesis based on threat intelligence or ATT&CK gap analysis.
  2. Identify Data Sources: Determine which logs and telemetry are needed to validate or refute the hypothesis.
  3. Execute Queries: Run detection queries against SIEM and EDR platforms to collect relevant events.
  4. Analyze Results: Examine query results for anomalies, correlating across multiple data sources.
  5. Validate Findings: Distinguish true positives from false positives through contextual analysis.
  6. Correlate Activity: Link findings to broader attack chains and threat actor TTPs.
  7. Document and Report: Record findings, update detection rules, and recommend response actions.

Key Concepts

ConceptDescription
T1071Application Layer Protocol
T1095Non-Application Layer Protocol
T1571Non-Standard Port

Tools & Systems

ToolPurpose
CrowdStrike FalconEDR telemetry and threat detection
Microsoft Defender for EndpointAdvanced hunting with KQL
Splunk EnterpriseSIEM log analysis with SPL queries
Elastic SecurityDetection rules and investigation timeline
SysmonDetailed Windows event monitoring
VelociraptorEndpoint artifact collection and hunting
Sigma RulesCross-platform detection rule format

Common Scenarios

  1. Scenario 1: Backdoor communicating to C2 on non-standard port
  2. Scenario 2: Data exfiltration over DNS to attacker nameserver
  3. Scenario 3: Compromised host scanning internal network
  4. Scenario 4: Cryptominer connecting to mining pool

Output Format

Hunt ID: TH-HUNTIN-[DATE]-[SEQ]
Technique: T1071
Host: [Hostname]
User: [Account context]
Evidence: [Log entries, process trees, network data]
Risk Level: [Critical/High/Medium/Low]
Confidence: [High/Medium/Low]
Recommended Action: [Containment, investigation, monitoring]

© 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 7 other files (scripts, references, assets) in skills/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections of mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills.

  • SKILL.md
  • LICENSE
  • assets/template.md
  • references/api-reference.md
  • references/standards.md
  • references/workflows.md
  • scripts/agent.py
  • scripts/process.py

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 54a7988

Compare with similar skills

Hunting For Unusual Network Connections 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.

Hunting For Unusual Network Connections compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Hunting For Unusual Network Connections this skillmukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills34k—~914Automated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Councilwarpdotdev/common-skills6101 repos~1.8kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Cybersecurityohmyjahh/xquads-squads277—~895Automated safety check: PassMIT
Rational Red Blue Debatedigoal/blog8.6k—~2.2kAutomated safety check: PassGPL-2.0
Secops Investigategoogle/skills21k1 repos~4.2kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Threat Huntinghypnguyen1209/offensive-claude388—~2.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

Similar skills

  • Council

    warpdotdev/common-skills

    Run a model-diverse subagent council to investigate the same problem from multiple perspectives, compare findings, and produce a final recommendation.

    610 GitHub starsUsed in 1 repo~1.8k tokens
    SecurityAuto-check passed
  • Cybersecurity

    ohmyjahh/xquads-squads

    Squad de 15 agentes de seguranca ofensiva e defensiva (Georgia Weidman, Peter Kim, Jim Manico, Chris Sanders, Omar Santos, Marcus Carey) cobrindo pentest, red team, blue team, AppSec, recon e…

    277 GitHub stars~895 tokensUpdated 12 days ago
    SecurityAuto-check passed
  • Answer general or cross-domain questions with a non-pleasing rational mode: adversarial red-team and blue-team expert analysis, mutually exclusive conclusions, up to five debate rounds, saved…

    8.6k GitHub stars~2.2k tokensUpdated 2 days ago
    SecurityAuto-check passed
  • Secops Investigate

    google/skills

    Official

    Expert guidance for deep security incident and entity investigations in Google SecOps.

    21k GitHub starsUsed in 1 repo~4.2k tokens
    SecurityAuto-check passed
  • Threat Hunting

    hypnguyen1209/offensive-claude

    A skill your agent uses when hunting threats or engineering detections — ATT&CK Detection-Strategies, Sigma + correlation with Detection-as-Code CI, Windows endpoint hunting…

    388 GitHub stars~2.4k tokensUpdated 13 days ago
    SecurityAuto-check passed
  • Purple Team

    gaasher/Agent-Loop-Skills

    A skill your agent uses when the user wants to automatically harden a guardrail, classifier, content filter, prompt, or API they own by running attack and defense together as a closed loop, not just…

    174 GitHub stars~2.6k tokensUpdated 3 mo ago
    SecurityAuto-check passed

More from mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills

All 644 skills in this repo
  • Campaign Attribution Evidence Analysis

    mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills

    Weighs infrastructure, TTP, malware code and timing evidence with the Diamond Model and competing hypotheses to reach a confidence-rated attribution.

    34k GitHub stars~2.3k tokensUpdated 1 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Go Malware Analysis in Ghidra

    mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills

    Walks through reverse engineering Go-compiled malware in Ghidra: parsing buildinfo and pclntab, recovering stripped function names and extracting dependencies.

    34k GitHub stars~2.8k tokensUpdated 1 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • LNK and Jump List Forensics

    mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills

    Guides forensic analysis of Windows LNK shortcut files and Jump Lists with LECmd, JLECmd and manual parsing to show file access and program execution.

    34k GitHub stars~2.8k tokensUpdated 1 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Malware Persistence Analysis with Autoruns

    mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills

    Hunts Windows malware persistence with Sysinternals Autoruns, covering run keys, services, scheduled tasks and drivers, with baseline comparison.

    34k GitHub stars~1.2k tokensUpdated 1 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • NTFS MFT Deleted File Recovery

    mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills

    Guides a Windows forensic examination of the NTFS Master File Table to recover deleted-file evidence, build timelines and spot timestomping.

    34k GitHub stars~2.7k tokensUpdated 1 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Network Covert Channel Analysis

    mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills

    Detects DNS tunneling, ICMP exfiltration and HTTP-based covert channels in packet captures and DNS logs when hunting for hidden command-and-control traffic.

    34k GitHub stars~2k tokensUpdated 1 mo ago
    Auto-check passed

Categories

Questions about Hunting For Unusual Network Connections

What does Hunting For Unusual Network Connections do?

Runs a hypothesis-driven threat hunt for command-and-control activity (T1071) by querying SIEM/EDR network telemetry for anomalous outbound traffic, rare destinations, non-standard ports, and…. Hunting For Unusual Network Connections is an agent skill from mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills. Runs a hypothesis-driven threat hunt for command-and-control activity (T1071) by querying SIEM/EDR network telemetry for anomalous outbound traffic, rare destinations, non-standard ports, and unusual connection frequencies from endpoints.

When should I use Hunting For Unusual Network Connections?

Hunting For Unusual Network Connections fits situations like: hunting for beaconing/C2 traffic; after threat intel flags suspicious infrastructure; alerts fire on anomalous connections.

How do I install Hunting For Unusual Network Connections in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills --skill hunting-for-unusual-network-connections -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections in mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills) into .claude/skills/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Hunting For Unusual Network Connections in Codex?

Run `npx skills add mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills --skill hunting-for-unusual-network-connections -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections in mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills) into .agents/skills/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Hunting For Unusual Network Connections 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 hunting-for-unusual-network-connections -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections, .gemini/skills/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections, .github/skills/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections and .opencode/skills/hunting-for-unusual-network-connections in your project.

What does Hunting For Unusual Network Connections need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Hunting For Unusual Network Connections needs Python for the scripts in its folder. Our summary lists: Python 3.

Does Hunting For Unusual Network Connections 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 Hunting For Unusual Network Connections 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 Hunting For Unusual Network Connections use?

Hunting For Unusual Network Connections 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 Hunting For Unusual Network Connections use?

About 914 tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 3.7k 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 1.6k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Hunting For Unusual Network Connections?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Hunting For Unusual Network Connections: Council (warpdotdev/common-skills, 610 stars), Cybersecurity (ohmyjahh/xquads-squads, 277 stars), Rational Red Blue Debate (digoal/blog, 8.6k stars) and Secops Investigate (google/skills, 21k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Hunting For Unusual Network Connections?

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.