Yara

Yara is a powerful instrument for researchers who need to create classifications of malware samples, as it allows you to scan files and directories based on given rules, as well as extend the use case scenarios to other situations when pattern identification and instance description is required.

Yara is available for Unix-like systems and Windows platforms as well. The Windows packages are portable and require no installation. You can use the Yara engines via its dedicated Windows packages, for 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

For example, after unpacking the utilities, you can run in Administrator mode a command-line interface of your choice, browser to the unpacked directory of Yara, and access it via its executable.

The utility has extensive documentation where you can see exactly what are the first steps of using and initiating Yara. Read more about it, here.

Moreover, if required, you can use Yara from a cross-installation environment, yara-python. Ultimately, all of these implementations help you create rules for searching and identifying file patterns from various system locations, and further manipulating the scan results of your choice.

Mainly, Yara is good at helping malware researchers conduct, with great precision, system scans and pattern matching activities for identifying malicious items or exploits, establishing their structure and configuration (based on samples), and generating descriptions.

Moreover, these descriptions can also be called 'rules,' especially given the fact that Yara allows you to use different ways to define these instances: binary-based and textual-based methods.

For situations when you want to use Yara for scanning archived or compressed pieces of content, yextend, a Yara augmentation that can manage and identify, with recursive and granular processes, even deeply-buried malicious items.

Yara makes it amazingly thrilling to search for malware. Because you can create the search rules and granularly define your environment's parameters, your creativity is the limit. Moreover, Yara is an extensive project with a detailed documentation, a large community where you can engage with others, and additional resources for niched tasks and requirements.