Small stagers embed well into Cobalt Strike’s built-in attack packages. Small stagers also allow me to use a PowerShell one-liner, during lateral movement, to bootstrap a payload into memory without putting a binary on disk. One of my favorite Cobalt Strike demos is the one where I embed a DNS TXT record stager for Beacon into a …Cobalt Strike Beacon used by NOBELIUM; Cobalt Strike network infrastructure used by NOBELIUM; The following alerts might also indicate threat activity associated with this threat. These alerts, however, can be triggered by unrelated threat activity and are not monitored in the status cards provided with this report.A complementary strategy to the Host Rotation Strategy was introduced to Cobalt Strike 4.5. The max retry strategy was added to HTTP, HTTPS, and DNS beacon listeners. A max retry strategy allows a beacon to exit after a specified failure count. As the failure count increases, sleep is adjusted to a specified value. By default, sleep is …Cobalt Strike is commercial threat emulation software that mimics a quiet, long-term embedded actor in a network. This actor, known as Beacon, communicates … Writing Beacon Object Files: Flexible, Stealthy, and Compatible. Monday 20 December, 2021. Our colleagues over at Core Security have been doing great things with Cobalt Strike, making use of it in their own engagements. They wrote up this post on creating Cobalt Strike Beacon Object Files using the MinGW compiler on Linux. Cobalt Strike is a popular red team tool for Windows which is also heavily used by threat actors. At the time of this writing, there is no official Cobalt Strike version for Linux. In August 2021, we at Intezer discovered a fully undetected ELF implementation of Cobalt Strike’s beacon, which we named Vermilion Strike.Cobalt Strike can use PowerShell, .NET, and Reflective DLLs for its post-exploitation features. This is the weaponization problem set. How to take things, developed outside the tool, and create a path to use them in the tool. One of the newest weaponization options in Cobalt Strike are Beacon Object Files.Cobalt Strike beacons can communicate over DNS. We show how to decode and decrypt DNS traffic in this blog post. This series of blog posts describes different methods to decrypt Cobalt Strike traffic. In part 1 of this series, we revealed private encryption keys found in rogue Cobalt Strike packages. In part 2, we decrypted…DNS - using a variety of DNS queries, Cobalt Strike's beacons can communicate back to the C2 server using only DNS. The advantage is that name resolution is almost always allowed and no direct communication takes place between the implant and the C2 server, since the DNS resolution will happen using the default nameservers. ...Self-signed SSL Certificates with SSL Beacon. The HTTPS Beacon uses the HTTP Beacon’s indicators in its communication. Malleable C2 profiles may also specify parameters for the Beacon C2 server’s self-signed SSL certificate. This is useful if you want to replicate an actor with unique indicators in their SSL certificate: https-certificateSMB Listener Setup. To create a SMB Beacon listener select Cobalt Strike -> Listeners on the main menu and press the Add button at the bottom of the Listeners tab display. The SMB Beacon is compatible with most actions in Cobalt Strike that spawn a payload. The exception to this are the user-driven attacks that require explicit stagers.Cobalt Strike Introduction. This 40 minute on-demand Cobalt Strike demonstration includes a guided walkthrough in a small cyber range to help demonstrate the key features of the solution. The focus is not on understanding all the security topics mentioned in detail, but rather to explore Cobalt Strike’s capabilities. Cobalt Strike is an adversary simulation software designed to test IT infrastructure for resilience against advanced cyberattacks. The technology emulates realistic threats in live attacks, enabling organizations to assess their vulnerabilities and better protect themselves. However, Cobalt Strike can also introduce risk: due to its various ... In this particular case, LockBit managed to side-load Cobalt Strike Beacon through a signed VMware xfer logs command line utility. Since our initial publication of this report, we have identified a connection with an affiliate Microsoft tracks as DEV-0401. A switch to LockBit represents a notable departure in DEV-0401’s previously observed TTPs.Beacon; Interoperablity; Community. All Features > Footer Menu 2. Interoperability. Core Impact; Outflank Security Tooling; Footer Menu 3. Support. Training; Community Kit; ... Cobalt Strike support resources, including the Cobalt Strike Manual, Community Kit, and Technical notes are available to help users.Cobalt Strike has a client-server architecture, in which several users (e.g., the members of the red team performing the attack) connect to a Team Server using the Aggressor client application. ... One of the most important components of the Cobalt Strike framework is the Beacon component. This component is installed on a host as part of …This repository is meant to host the core files needed to create a Beacon Object File for use with Cobalt Strike. A Beacon Object File (BOF) is a compiled C program, written to a convention that allows it to execute within a Beacon process and use internal Beacon APIs. BOFs are a way to rapidly extend the Beacon agent with new post-exploitation ...Reverse Proxy using Cobalt Strike Beacon. A technique that we come across often is a reverse proxy. We see instances where threat actors use their beacon sessions to establish RDP access through a reverse proxy. Cobalt Strike has the ability to run a SOCKS proxy server on the team server. This enables the operators to setup a …Tuesday 16 May, 2023. Over the past few years, there has been a massive proliferation of YARA signatures for Beacon. We know from conversations with our customers that this has become problematic when using Cobalt Strike for red team engagements and that there has been some confusion over how Cobalt Strike’s malleable C2 options can help.Cobalt Strike 2.5 uses the SMB Beacon to help with this problem. Beacon features to include its Bypass UAC attack and new spawnas command [use credentials to spawn a payload; without touching disk] accept the SMB Beacon as a target payload. This greatly improves Cobalt Strike’s options to work through one egress channel.Sep 21, 2020 · can protect against them. We will also look at Cobalt Strike from the adversary’s perspective. LISTENERS Listeners are at the core of Cobalt Strike. They allow adversaries to configure the C2 method used in an attack. Every attack or payload generated in Cobalt Strike requires the targeted user to select a Listener to embed within it. When you have a full system memory dump that is uncompressed, the first thing to check, is for the presence of a Cobalt Strike beacon in memory. This can be done with tool 1768.py, a tool to extract and analyze the configuration of Cobalt Strike beacons. Make sure to use a 64-bit version of Python, as uncompressed full memory dumps are …Cobalt Strike is commercial threat emulation software that emulates a quiet, long-term embedded actor in a network. This actor, known as Beacon, communicates …Jul 12, 2021 · Cobalt Strike is a commercial tool that security professionals use to test the security of networks and systems. It includes a Beacon payload that allows remote control and monitoring, and can be used for malicious purposes by cybercriminals. Cobalt Strike is a premium offensive security tool leveraged by penetration testers and red team members as a way to emulate adversary behavior. The goal is to validate security detection capabilities and processes replicating a real-world intrusion. While Cobalt Strike is a legitimate tool, it is often abused by actual threat actors as a …Cobalt Strike is a popular red team tool for Windows which is also heavily used by threat actors. At the time of this writing, there is no official Cobalt Strike version for Linux. In August 2021, we at Intezer discovered a fully undetected ELF implementation of Cobalt Strike’s beacon, which we named Vermilion Strike.Sep 21, 2020 · can protect against them. We will also look at Cobalt Strike from the adversary’s perspective. LISTENERS Listeners are at the core of Cobalt Strike. They allow adversaries to configure the C2 method used in an attack. Every attack or payload generated in Cobalt Strike requires the targeted user to select a Listener to embed within it. Cobalt Strike Beacon used by NOBELIUM; Cobalt Strike network infrastructure used by NOBELIUM; The following alerts might also indicate threat activity associated with this threat. These alerts, however, can be triggered by unrelated threat activity and are not monitored in the status cards provided with this report.As Google explained, cracked and leaked releases of Cobalt Strike are, in most cases, at least one version behind, which allowed the company to collect hundreds of stagers, templates, and beacon ...Mar 16, 2022 · Windows XP and Windows 7 users: Start your computer in Safe Mode. Click Start, click Shut Down, click Restart, click OK. During your computer start process, press the F8 key on your keyboard multiple times until you see the Windows Advanced Option menu, and then select Safe Mode with Networking from the list. Cobalt Strike’s Beacon exposes a SOCKS interface for pivoting. SOCKS is a standard for proxy servers and proxy-aware clients. To create a SOCKS interface tied to a Beacon: 1. Interact with a Beacon. 2. Type sleep 0 to ask to the Beacon to check-in multiple times each second. A high check-in time will introduce latency into your tunneled …Beacon is Cobalt Strike’s payload to model advanced attackers. Use Beacon to egress a network over HTTP, HTTPS, or DNS. You may also limit which hosts egress a network by controlling peer- to-peer Beacons over Windows named pipes and TCP sockets. Beacon is flexible and supports asynchronous and interactive communication. Beacon is Cobalt Strike’s payload to model advanced attackers. Use Beacon to egress a network over HTTP, HTTPS, or DNS. You may also limit which hosts egress a network by controlling peer- to-peer Beacons over Windows named pipes and TCP sockets. Beacon is flexible and supports asynchronous and interactive communication. May 28, 2021 · Cobalt Strike Beacon used by NOBELIUM; Cobalt Strike network infrastructure used by NOBELIUM; The following alerts might also indicate threat activity associated with this threat. These alerts, however, can be triggered by unrelated threat activity and are not monitored in the status cards provided with this report. Also, a Cobalt Strike beacon can execute PowerShell scripts, perform keylogging activities, take screenshots, download files, and spawn other payloads. Ways Cobalt Strike Can Help Security Researchers It is often difficult to spot gaps or vulnerabilities in a system that you created or have been using for a long time. By using …Recipe 24: Picking a random letter from a six-byte string. Recipe 25: Creating a Wifi QR code. Recipe 26: Extracting and Decoding a Multistage PHP Webshell. Recipe 27: Decoding an Auto Visitor PHP script. Recipe 28: De-obfuscation of Cobalt Strike Beacon using Conditional Jumps to obtain shellcode.Short bio. Trojan is Malwarebytes’ detection name that applies to various types of malware that hide their true intentions and then exploit systems once they are inside.. Type and source of infection. Common infection methods for Trojans include:May 11, 2020 · Key Points. 1. Progression: The attack propogated initially through the company’s VPN to an inner Windows server, and then on to the Domain Controller and afterward to servers containing the sought-after data. 2. Toolkit: The attackers used a CobaltStrike beacon with a then-unknown persistence method using DLL hijacking (detailed below). OVERVIEW. PRODUCT FEATURES. INTEROPERABILITY. PRICING. BUNDLES. Cobalt Strike is a powerful threat emulation tool that provides a post-exploitation agent and …Community+ 2024. Level 10. 183,570 points. Posted on Mar 13, 2022 8:00 PM. MediOgre wrote: I was recently contacted by someone via email saying they had installed a Cobalt Strike Beacon on my devices and is threatening to release a bunch of information to my email contacts. I have done an Etrecheck scan and cannot interpret …Cobalt Strike allows users to obfuscate Beacon via its malleable C2 profile. For example, the stage{} block can be used to modify the RAW Beacon payload and define how it is loaded into memory. Whilst this offers flexibility, it does have limitations which can expose Beacon to detection via YARA scanning (as shown in the Cobalt Strike and …Ryan Stephenson (RCStep) Adds Shellcode - Shellcode Generator to the Cobalt Strike top menu bar. CSSG is aggressor, .NET, and python scripts used to more easily generate and format beacon shellcode. Generates beacon stageless shellcode with exposed exit method, additional formatting, encryption, encoding, compression, multiline output, etc. Cobalt Strike support resources, including the Cobalt Strike Manual, Community Kit, and Technical notes are available to help users. ... Beacon; Interoperablity ... In a sample of the Cobalt Strike beacon shared with BleepingComputer, the malware will communicate with the attacker's command and control servers through a fake 'jquery-3.3.1.min.js' file.Cobalt Strike is a popular red team tool for Windows which is also heavily used by threat actors. At the time of this writing, there is no official Cobalt Strike version for Linux. In August 2021, we at Intezer discovered a fully undetected ELF implementation of Cobalt Strike’s beacon, which we named Vermilion Strike.Beacon implants injected in a benign process live in a thread with a Wait:DelayExecution state (probably related to Cobalt Strike's sleep).Find all processes that contain a thread in a Wait:DelayExecution state. Then, leverage ETW tracing …The syntax for rportfwd is: rportfwd [bind port] [forward host] [forward port]. rportfwd_local - Use this command to setup a reverse pivot through Beacon with one variation. This feature initiates a connection to the forward host/port from your Cobalt Strike client. The forwarded traffic is communicated through the connection your Cobalt Strike ...Beacon implants injected in a benign process live in a thread with a Wait:DelayExecution state (probably related to Cobalt Strike's sleep).Find all processes that contain a thread in a Wait:DelayExecution state. Then, leverage ETW tracing …Many of Cobalt Strike’s attacks and workflows deliver a payload as multiple stages. The first stage is called a stager. The stager is a very tiny program, often written in hand-optimized assembly, that: connects to Cobalt Strike, downloads the Beacon payload (also called the stage), and executes it. The payload staging process exists for a ...Cobalt Strike is a commercial threat emulation platform designed to provide long-term, covert command-and-control (C2) communication between Beacon agents …Cobalt Strike is a threat emulation tool which simulates adversarial post-exploitation scenarios and supports Red Team operations. Replicate the tactics of a long-term embedded threat actor using a post-exploitation agent, Beacon, and Malleable C2, a command and control program that enables modification of network indicators to blend in …The HTTP and HTTPS beacons download tasks with an HTTP GET request. These beacons send data back with an HTTP POST request.https://www.cobaltstrike.com/help-...Redefine Beacon's communication with Cobalt Strike's malleable C2 language. This allows you to cloak Beacon activity to look like other malware or blend-in as legitimate traffic. The Beacon Console. Right-click on a Beacon session and select interact to open that Beacon’s console. The console is the main user interface for your Beacon session.Wie Cobalt Strike Beacon Teil von Bedrohungskampagnen wurde. Im Dezember 2020 wurde eine umfangreiche und effektive Spionagekampagne bekannt, die eine Backdoor in die verbreitete Netzwerküberwachungssoftware SolarWinds installierte. Die Ermittler deckten auf, dass zu den von den Bedrohungsakteuren verwendeten Tools auch Cobalt … Beacon is Cobalt Strike’s payload to model advanced attackers. Use Beacon to egress a network over HTTP, HTTPS, or DNS. You may also limit which hosts egress a network by controlling peer- to-peer Beacons over Windows named pipes and TCP sockets. Beacon is flexible and supports asynchronous and interactive communication. The syntax for rportfwd is: rportfwd [bind port] [forward host] [forward port]. rportfwd_local - Use this command to setup a reverse pivot through Beacon with one variation. This feature initiates a connection to the forward host/port from your Cobalt Strike client. The forwarded traffic is communicated through the connection your Cobalt Strike ...Cobalt Strike is commercial threat emulation software that emulates a quiet, long-term embedded actor in a network. This actor, known as Beacon, communicates …According to Wikipedia, 1768 Kelvin is the melting point of the metal cobalt. This tool decodes and dumps the configuration of Cobalt Strike beacons. You can find a sample beacon here. 1768_v0_0_3.…The syntax for rportfwd is: rportfwd [bind port] [forward host] [forward port]. rportfwd_local - Use this command to setup a reverse pivot through Beacon with one variation. This feature initiates a connection to the forward host/port from your Cobalt Strike client. The forwarded traffic is communicated through the connection your Cobalt Strike ...Exploring Cobalt Strike’s Beacon instructions. All the evidence suggests that beacon.dll is the Cobalt Strike Beacon malware. To understand what this malware is capable of; we analysed the DLL further. At the core of beacon.dll is a large switch statement containing cases to handle the client-side execution of C2 commands, shown in Figure 9.The first two rely on named pipe impersonation. The last one relies on token duplication. 1. meterpreter > getsystem -h. 2. Usage: getsystem [options] 3. 4. Attempt to elevate your privilege to that of local system.Cobalt Strike does not provide a way to override the default macro attack. Fortunately, its choice of rundll32.exe is a string inside of the macro that you can edit. If this choice does not work for you, change this to another process. Many times, I have edited Cobalt Strike’s VBA macro to spawn Internet Explorer and inject my stager into it.Cobalt Strike is a legitimate, commercial penetration testing tool that has been largely co-opted by ransomware gangs to launch attacks. It deploys an agent named “Beacon” on the targeted machine, which provides the attacker a strong foothold of attack functionality. Its use exploded among cybercriminals in 2021.Cobalt Strike’s Beacon payload has had SOCKS proxy pivoting since 2013. This form of pivoting makes it easy to tunnel many tools through Beacon. To tunnel the Metasploit Framework through Beacon: 1. Interact with a Beacon and type socks 1234 to create a SOCKS proxy server on port 1234 of your Cobalt Strike team server system. 2.Cobalt Strike is a premium offensive security tool leveraged by penetration testers and red team members as a way to emulate adversary behavior. The goal is to validate security detection capabilities and processes replicating a real-world intrusion. While Cobalt Strike is a legitimate tool, it is often abused by actual threat actors as a …Tuesday 16 May, 2023. Over the past few years, there has been a massive proliferation of YARA signatures for Beacon. We know from conversations with our customers that this has become problematic when using Cobalt Strike for red team engagements and that there has been some confusion over how Cobalt Strike’s malleable C2 options can help.Cobalt Strike’s Beacon has two DNS communication strategies. Which strategy makes sense depends on your situation. Hybrid DNS/HTTP Communication. By default, DNS Beacon uses DNS as a beacon and HTTP as a data channel. Every sixty seconds (or some other user controlled time), the compromised system will make an A …The Cobalt Strike team server has no remote attacks or built-in offensive capability [with the exception of spear phishing]. Instead, Cobalt Strike pushes all of its offensive actions down to the Beacon payload. The Beacon payload then executes these things on your behalf. This method of offense plays well with asynchronous communication.Short bio. Trojan is Malwarebytes’ detection name that applies to various types of malware that hide their true intentions and then exploit systems once they are inside.. Type and source of infection. Common infection methods for Trojans include:Cobalt Strike Beacon Parser. Knowing the obvious (the Powershell decoding method and shellcode very similar to Metasploits Meterpreter, and from working with previous samples). We know with a high degree of confidence the payload is a Cobalt Strike payload.Small stagers embed well into Cobalt Strike’s built-in attack packages. Small stagers also allow me to use a PowerShell one-liner, during lateral movement, to bootstrap a payload into memory without putting a binary on disk. One of my favorite Cobalt Strike demos is the one where I embed a DNS TXT record stager for Beacon into a … Cobalt Strike. Cobalt Strike is a commercial, full-featured, remote access tool that bills itself as "adversary simulation software designed to execute targeted attacks and emulate the post-exploitation actions of advanced threat actors". Cobalt Strike’s interactive post-exploit capabilities cover the full range of ATT&CK tactics, all ... TCP Beacon. The TCP Beacon uses a TCP socket to communicate through a parent Beacon. This peer-to-peer communication works with Beacons on the same host and across the network. TCP Listener Setup. To create a TCP Beacon listener select Cobalt Strike -> Listeners on the main menu and press the Add button at the bottom of the …Cobalt Strike is ubiquitous in the cyber security arena. It’s a prolific toolkit used at many levels of intrusion to solve adversaries' problems like post-intrusion …On Wednesday, Intel 471 published a report exploring the abuse of Cobalt Strike, a commercial penetration testing tool released in 2012 which can be used to deploy beacons on systems to simulate ...Cobalt Strike’s Beacon payload has had SOCKS proxy pivoting since 2013. This form of pivoting makes it easy to tunnel many tools through Beacon. To tunnel the Metasploit Framework through Beacon: 1. Interact with a Beacon and type socks 1234 to create a SOCKS proxy server on port 1234 of your Cobalt Strike team server system. 2.OPSEC Considerations for Beacon Commands. Update January 9, 2020 – This topic is now part of the Cobalt Strike documentation. Head over to the Beacon Command Behavior page for the latest version of this information. A good operator knows their tools and has an idea of how the tool is accomplishing its objectives on their behalf.i春秋. 上周更新了Cobalt Strike系列教程第一章：简介与安装，文章发布后，深受大家的喜爱，遂将该系列教程的其他章节与大家分享，提升更多实用技能！. 第二章：Beacon详解. 一、Beacon命令. 大家通过上一篇内容的学习，配置好Listner，执行我们的Payload后，即可 ...This report provides detailed analysis of three malicious ISO files associated with a spearphishing campaign using Constant Contact. The files contain a custom …Many of Cobalt Strike’s attacks and workflows deliver a payload as multiple stages. The first stage is called a stager. The stager is a very tiny program, often written in hand-optimized assembly, that: connects to Cobalt Strike, downloads the Beacon payload (also called the stage), and executes it. The payload staging process exists for a ...This repository is meant to host the core files needed to create a Beacon Object File for use with Cobalt Strike. A Beacon Object File (BOF) is a compiled C program, written to a convention that allows it to execute within a Beacon process and use internal Beacon APIs. BOFs are a way to rapidly extend the Beacon agent with new post-exploitation ...Key Points. 1. Progression: The attack propogated initially through the company’s VPN to an inner Windows server, and then on to the Domain Controller and afterward to servers containing the sought-after data. 2. Toolkit: The attackers used a CobaltStrike beacon with a then-unknown persistence method using DLL hijacking …
Jan 20, 2022 · These two articles ( [ 1] [ 2 ]) are ideal for helping security analysts identify, collect, and configure Cobalt Strike beacon payloads from an endpoint using Elastic. It is often difficult to collect the Cobalt Strike beacon payload from memory and extract its configuration to identify observables and cluster group activities, partially due to ... . Percy jacksom
These commands run Cobalt Strike’s SSH client. The client will report any connection or authentication issues to the parent Beacon. If the connection succeeds, you will see a new session in Cobalt Strike’s display. This is an SSH session. Right-click on this session and press Interact to open the SSH console.This type determines how Cobalt Strike will process the output and what it will present the output as. The types are: CALLBACK_OUTPUT is generic output. Cobalt Strike will convert this output to UTF-16 (internally) using the target's default character set. ... This function returns information about beacon such as the beacon address, sections ...Cobalt Strike Analysis and Tutorial: Identifying Beacon Team Servers in the Wild. 74,502. people reacted. 27. 9 min. read. By Durgesh Sangvikar, Chris Navarrete, …OVERVIEW. PRODUCT FEATURES. INTEROPERABILITY. PRICING. BUNDLES. Cobalt Strike is a powerful threat emulation tool that provides a post-exploitation agent and …Starting the Team Server. Cobalt Strike is split into client and a server components. The server, referred to as the team server, is the controller for the Beacon payload and the host for Cobalt Strike ’s social engineering features. The team server also stores data collected by Cobalt Strike and it manages logging.. The Cobalt Strike team server must run on a …Dec 2, 2022 · The Cobalt Strike beacon loader gets decrypted into a memory buffer and executed with the help of a known trick. Instead of calling the beacon loader directly, the loader uses the Windows API function EnumChildWindows to run it. This function contains three parameters, one of which is a callback function. Cobalt Strike is commercial threat emulation software that mimics a quiet, long-term embedded actor in a network. This actor, known as Beacon, communicates …DNS - using a variety of DNS queries, Cobalt Strike's beacons can communicate back to the C2 server using only DNS. The advantage is that name resolution is almost always allowed and no direct communication takes place between the implant and the C2 server, since the DNS resolution will happen using the default nameservers. ...Jun 15, 2022 · Extract the package on the Windows endpoint (Password: apt). Start cmd.exe as Administrator. Navigate to the extracted program folder and run APTSimulator.bat. Once APTSimulator.bat is running, choose “CobaltStrike Beacon Simulation” and let it run. This would generate Cobalt Strike beacon activity. Cobalt Strike is commercial threat emulation software that mimics a quiet, long-term embedded actor in a network. This actor, known as Beacon, communicates …Many of Cobalt Strike’s attacks and workflows deliver a payload as multiple stages. The first stage is called a stager. The stager is a very tiny program, often written in hand-optimized assembly, that: connects to Cobalt Strike, downloads the Beacon payload (also called the stage), and executes it. The payload staging process exists for a ... The Cobalt Strike Arsenal Kit is a collection of customizable tools that enable users to better simulate real-world adversary tactics and techniques. Users can build and use the kits as they are or modify them to suit their engagements and support their goals. The Arsenal Kit includes: The Sleep Mask Kit – Hides Beacon in memory while it sleeps. Cobalt Strike is a platform for adversary simulations and red team operations. The product is designed to execute targeted attacks and emulate the post-exploitation actions of advanced threat actors. This section describes the attack process supported by Cobalt Strike ’s feature set. The rest of this manual discusses these features in detail. Run a Cobalt Strike client from the same Windows system that Core Impact is installed onto. Connect this Cobalt Strike client to your team server. In this setup, run spunnel_local x64 127.0.0.1 9000 to spawn and tunnel the Impact agent through Beacon. The spunnel_local command is like spunnel, with the difference that it routes the agent ...Published on: October 19, 2023. A new and deeply troubling extortion scam has emerged through spam emails, where scammers claim to have infected devices with Cobalt ….