Now liveThe Skillselion MCP - thousands of ranked skills, loaded into your agent mid-task. No install.Get it →
mukul975 avatar

Analyzing Certificate Transparency For Phishing

  • 436 installs
  • 27.3k repo stars
  • Updated August 2, 2026
  • mukul975/anthropic-cybersecurity-skills

Analyzing Certificate Transparency for Phishing is an agent skill that helps discover phishing domains by analyzing CT log certificate issuances.

About

Analyzing Certificate Transparency for Phishing is a security-oriented agent skill aimed at solo builders and small teams who operate a branded product on the public web and cannot afford a full threat-intel desk. Certificate Transparency logs publish every publicly trusted TLS certificate as it is issued; attackers routinely register typosquats and homoglyph domains minutes before a campaign. This skill is meant to guide an AI agent through querying and interpreting CT data to find certificates that mimic your product, login paths, or executive names—so you can block, warn users, or initiate takedowns early. Catalog detail here is inferred from the skill name and repo placement because the ingested readme fragment was license text only; treat operational commands as something to confirm in the full SKILL.md after install. Use when you are validating launch readiness, responding to user reports of fake login pages, or running periodic brand-protection sweeps.

  • Focuses on Certificate Transparency feeds to surface lookalike and fraudulent domains
  • Fits Anthropic cybersecurity skills bundle for agent-guided threat hunting
  • Supports proactive detection before users report credential-harvesting sites
  • Pairs with domain monitoring and takedown workflows for indie SaaS founders
  • Apache 2.0 licensed collection item—verify local SKILL.md for exact query steps

Analyzing Certificate Transparency For Phishing by the numbers

  • 436 all-time installs (skills.sh)
  • +26 installs in the week ending Aug 4, 2026 (Skillselion tracking)
  • Ranked #531 of 2,203 Security skills by installs in the Skillselion catalog
  • Security screen: MEDIUM risk (skills.sh audit)
  • Data as of Aug 5, 2026 (Skillselion catalog sync)
npx skills add https://github.com/mukul975/anthropic-cybersecurity-skills --skill analyzing-certificate-transparency-for-phishing

Add your badge

Show developers this skill is listed on Skillselion. Paste this into your README.

Listed on Skillselion
Installs436
repo stars27.3k
Security audit2 / 3 scanners passed
Last updatedAugust 2, 2026
Repositorymukul975/anthropic-cybersecurity-skills

What it does

Hunt newly issued TLS certificates that impersonate your brand or customers by querying Certificate Transparency data for phishing infrastructure.

Who is it for?

Best when you're shipping customer-facing SaaS and need lightweight brand-abuse detection without an enterprise SOC.

Skip if: Skip if you have no public brand or domain exposure, or those and already have managed CT monitoring and SOC playbooks.

When should I use this skill?

When monitoring brand impersonation, investigating reported phishing URLs, or adding CT-based domain discovery to your security checklist.

What you get

You obtain a prioritized list of suspicious certificates or hostnames to investigate, block, or escalate for takedown.

  • Suspicious hostname or certificate candidate list
  • Investigation notes for block or takedown

Files

SKILL.mdMarkdownGitHub ↗

Analyzing Certificate Transparency for Phishing

Overview

Certificate Transparency (CT) is an Internet security standard that creates a public, append-only log of all issued SSL/TLS certificates. Monitoring CT logs enables early detection of phishing domains that register certificates mimicking legitimate brands, unauthorized certificate issuance for owned domains, and certificate-based attack infrastructure. This skill covers querying CT logs via crt.sh, real-time monitoring with Certstream, building automated alerting for suspicious certificates, and integrating findings into threat intelligence workflows.

When to Use

  • When investigating security incidents that require analyzing certificate transparency for phishing
  • 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

  • Python 3.9+ with requests, certstream, tldextract, Levenshtein libraries
  • Access to crt.sh (https://crt.sh/) for historical CT log queries
  • Certstream (https://certstream.calidog.io/) for real-time monitoring
  • List of organization domains and brand keywords to monitor
  • Understanding of SSL/TLS certificate structure and issuance process

Key Concepts

Certificate Transparency Logs

CT logs are cryptographically assured, publicly auditable, append-only records of TLS certificate issuance. Major CAs (Let's Encrypt, DigiCert, Sectigo, Google Trust Services) submit all issued certificates to multiple CT logs. As of 2025, Chrome and Safari require CT for all publicly trusted certificates.

Phishing Detection via CT

Attackers register lookalike domains and obtain free certificates (often from Let's Encrypt) to make phishing sites appear legitimate with HTTPS. CT monitoring detects these early because the certificate appears in logs before the phishing campaign launches, providing a window for proactive blocking.

crt.sh Database

crt.sh is a free web interface and PostgreSQL database operated by Sectigo that indexes CT logs. It supports wildcard searches (%.example.com), direct SQL queries, and JSON API responses. It tracks certificate issuance, expiration, and revocation across all major CT logs.

Workflow

Step 1: Query crt.sh for Certificate History

import requests
import json
from datetime import datetime
import tldextract

class CTLogMonitor:
    CRT_SH_URL = "https://crt.sh"

    def __init__(self, monitored_domains, brand_keywords):
        self.monitored_domains = monitored_domains
        self.brand_keywords = [k.lower() for k in brand_keywords]

    def query_crt_sh(self, domain, include_expired=False):
        """Query crt.sh for certificates matching a domain."""
        params = {
            "q": f"%.{domain}",
            "output": "json",
        }
        if not include_expired:
            params["exclude"] = "expired"

        resp = requests.get(self.CRT_SH_URL, params=params, timeout=30)
        if resp.status_code == 200:
            certs = resp.json()
            print(f"[+] crt.sh: {len(certs)} certificates for *.{domain}")
            return certs
        return []

    def find_suspicious_certs(self, domain):
        """Find certificates that may be phishing attempts."""
        certs = self.query_crt_sh(domain)
        suspicious = []

        for cert in certs:
            common_name = cert.get("common_name", "").lower()
            name_value = cert.get("name_value", "").lower()
            issuer = cert.get("issuer_name", "")
            not_before = cert.get("not_before", "")
            not_after = cert.get("not_after", "")

            # Check for exact domain matches (legitimate)
            extracted = tldextract.extract(common_name)
            cert_domain = f"{extracted.domain}.{extracted.suffix}"
            if cert_domain == domain:
                continue  # Legitimate certificate

            # Flag suspicious patterns
            flags = []
            if domain.replace(".", "") in common_name.replace(".", ""):
                flags.append("contains target domain string")
            if any(kw in common_name for kw in self.brand_keywords):
                flags.append("contains brand keyword")
            if "let's encrypt" in issuer.lower():
                flags.append("free CA (Let's Encrypt)")

            if flags:
                suspicious.append({
                    "common_name": cert.get("common_name", ""),
                    "name_value": cert.get("name_value", ""),
                    "issuer": issuer,
                    "not_before": not_before,
                    "not_after": not_after,
                    "serial": cert.get("serial_number", ""),
                    "flags": flags,
                    "crt_sh_id": cert.get("id", ""),
                    "crt_sh_url": f"https://crt.sh/?id={cert.get('id', '')}",
                })

        print(f"[+] Found {len(suspicious)} suspicious certificates")
        return suspicious

monitor = CTLogMonitor(
    monitored_domains=["mycompany.com", "mycompany.org"],
    brand_keywords=["mycompany", "mybrand", "myproduct"],
)
suspicious = monitor.find_suspicious_certs("mycompany.com")
for cert in suspicious[:5]:
    print(f"  [{cert['common_name']}] Flags: {cert['flags']}")

Step 2: Real-Time Monitoring with Certstream

import certstream
import Levenshtein
import re
from datetime import datetime

class CertstreamMonitor:
    def __init__(self, watched_domains, brand_keywords, similarity_threshold=0.8):
        self.watched_domains = [d.lower() for d in watched_domains]
        self.brand_keywords = [k.lower() for k in brand_keywords]
        self.threshold = similarity_threshold
        self.alerts = []

    def start_monitoring(self, max_alerts=100):
        """Start real-time CT log monitoring."""
        print("[*] Starting Certstream monitoring...")
        print(f"    Watching: {self.watched_domains}")
        print(f"    Keywords: {self.brand_keywords}")

        def callback(message, context):
            if message["message_type"] == "certificate_update":
                data = message["data"]
                leaf = data.get("leaf_cert", {})
                all_domains = leaf.get("all_domains", [])

                for domain in all_domains:
                    domain_lower = domain.lower().strip("*.")
                    if self._is_suspicious(domain_lower):
                        alert = {
                            "domain": domain,
                            "all_domains": all_domains,
                            "issuer": leaf.get("issuer", {}).get("O", ""),
                            "fingerprint": leaf.get("fingerprint", ""),
                            "not_before": leaf.get("not_before", ""),
                            "detected_at": datetime.now().isoformat(),
                            "reason": self._get_reason(domain_lower),
                        }
                        self.alerts.append(alert)
                        print(f"  [ALERT] {domain} - {alert['reason']}")

                        if len(self.alerts) >= max_alerts:
                            raise KeyboardInterrupt

        try:
            certstream.listen_for_events(callback, url="wss://certstream.calidog.io/")
        except KeyboardInterrupt:
            print(f"\n[+] Monitoring stopped. {len(self.alerts)} alerts collected.")
        return self.alerts

    def _is_suspicious(self, domain):
        """Check if domain is suspicious relative to watched domains."""
        for watched in self.watched_domains:
            # Exact keyword match
            watched_base = watched.split(".")[0]
            if watched_base in domain and domain != watched:
                return True

            # Levenshtein distance (typosquatting detection)
            domain_base = tldextract.extract(domain).domain
            similarity = Levenshtein.ratio(watched_base, domain_base)
            if similarity >= self.threshold and domain_base != watched_base:
                return True

        # Brand keyword match
        for keyword in self.brand_keywords:
            if keyword in domain:
                return True

        return False

    def _get_reason(self, domain):
        """Determine why domain was flagged."""
        reasons = []
        for watched in self.watched_domains:
            watched_base = watched.split(".")[0]
            if watched_base in domain:
                reasons.append(f"contains '{watched_base}'")
            domain_base = tldextract.extract(domain).domain
            similarity = Levenshtein.ratio(watched_base, domain_base)
            if similarity >= self.threshold and domain_base != watched_base:
                reasons.append(f"similar to '{watched}' ({similarity:.0%})")
        for kw in self.brand_keywords:
            if kw in domain:
                reasons.append(f"brand keyword '{kw}'")
        return "; ".join(reasons) if reasons else "unknown"

cs_monitor = CertstreamMonitor(
    watched_domains=["mycompany.com"],
    brand_keywords=["mycompany", "mybrand"],
    similarity_threshold=0.75,
)
alerts = cs_monitor.start_monitoring(max_alerts=50)

Step 3: Enumerate Subdomains from CT Logs

def enumerate_subdomains_ct(domain):
    """Discover all subdomains from Certificate Transparency logs."""
    params = {"q": f"%.{domain}", "output": "json"}
    resp = requests.get("https://crt.sh", params=params, timeout=30)

    if resp.status_code != 200:
        return []

    certs = resp.json()
    subdomains = set()
    for cert in certs:
        name_value = cert.get("name_value", "")
        for name in name_value.split("\n"):
            name = name.strip().lower()
            if name.endswith(f".{domain}") or name == domain:
                name = name.lstrip("*.")
                subdomains.add(name)

    sorted_subs = sorted(subdomains)
    print(f"[+] CT subdomain enumeration for {domain}: {len(sorted_subs)} subdomains")
    return sorted_subs

subdomains = enumerate_subdomains_ct("example.com")
for sub in subdomains[:20]:
    print(f"  {sub}")

Step 4: Generate CT Intelligence Report

def generate_ct_report(suspicious_certs, certstream_alerts, domain):
    report = f"""# Certificate Transparency Intelligence Report
## Target Domain: {domain}
## Generated: {datetime.now().isoformat()}

## Summary
- Suspicious certificates found: {len(suspicious_certs)}
- Real-time alerts triggered: {len(certstream_alerts)}

## Suspicious Certificates (crt.sh)
| Common Name | Issuer | Flags | crt.sh Link |
|------------|--------|-------|-------------|
"""
    for cert in suspicious_certs[:20]:
        flags = "; ".join(cert.get("flags", []))
        report += (f"| {cert['common_name']} | {cert['issuer'][:30]} "
                   f"| {flags} | [View]({cert['crt_sh_url']}) |\n")

    report += f"""
## Real-Time Certstream Alerts
| Domain | Issuer | Reason | Detected |
|--------|--------|--------|----------|
"""
    for alert in certstream_alerts[:20]:
        report += (f"| {alert['domain']} | {alert['issuer']} "
                   f"| {alert['reason']} | {alert['detected_at'][:19]} |\n")

    report += """
## Recommendations
1. Add flagged domains to DNS sinkhole / web proxy blocklist
2. Submit takedown requests for confirmed phishing domains
3. Monitor CT logs continuously for new certificate registrations
4. Implement CAA DNS records to restrict certificate issuance for your domains
5. Deploy DMARC to prevent email spoofing from lookalike domains
"""
    with open(f"ct_report_{domain.replace('.','_')}.md", "w") as f:
        f.write(report)
    print(f"[+] CT report saved")
    return report

generate_ct_report(suspicious, alerts if 'alerts' in dir() else [], "mycompany.com")

Validation Criteria

  • crt.sh queries return certificate data for target domains
  • Suspicious certificates identified based on lookalike patterns
  • Certstream real-time monitoring detects new phishing certificates
  • Subdomain enumeration produces comprehensive list from CT logs
  • Alerts generated with reason classification
  • CT intelligence report created with actionable recommendations

References

Related skills

How it compares

Agent-guided CT hunting skill—not a replacement for managed brand-protection SaaS or full pentest engagements.

FAQ

Who is analyzing-certificate-transparency-for-phishing for?

Developers and small teams defending a public brand or login surface who want agent help reviewing Certificate Transparency for impersonation domains.

When should I use analyzing-certificate-transparency-for-phishing?

During Ship security hardening, after launch when monitoring abuse, or when validating that a reported phishing URL is tied to a fresh cert.

Is analyzing-certificate-transparency-for-phishing safe to install?

It may call external CT APIs or run network queries; review the Security Audits panel on this page and the full SKILL.md before granting network permissions.

Securityappseccompliance

This week in AI coding

Five minutes, every Monday - the tools, releases and tactics for developers.

unsubscribe anytime.