YARA is a tool aimed at (but not limited to) helping malware researchers to identify and classify malware samples.
With YARA you can create descriptions of malware families (or whatever you want to describe) based on textual or binary patterns. Each description, a.k.a rule, consists of a set of strings and a boolean expression which determine its logic.
This is free and open source software.
Features include:
- Command-line interface or from Python scripts with the yara-python extension.
- Easy to uderstand rules that have a syntax resembling the C language. Each rule in YARA starts with the keyword rule followed by a rule identifier. Rules are generally composed of two sections: strings definition and condition.
- Add comments to your YARA rules just as if it was a C source file, both single-line and multi-line C-style comments are supported.
- Strings – three types of strings in YARA: hexadecimal strings, text strings and regular expressions.
- Regular expressions.
- Modules – extend YARA’s features. They allow you to define data structures and functions which can be used in your rules to express more complex conditions.
- Cross-platform support – runs under Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: virustotal.github.io/yara
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: The YARA Authors
License: BSD 3-Clause “New” or “Revised” License
YARA is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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