Awesome YARA

A curated list of awesome YARA rules, tools, and resources. Inspired by awesome-python and awesome-php.

YARA is an ancronym for: YARA: Another Recursive Ancronym, or Yet Another Ridiculous Acronym. Pick your choice.

-- Victor M. Alvarez (@plusvic)

YARA, the "pattern matching swiss knife for malware researchers (and everyone else)" is developed by @plusvic and @VirusTotal. View it on GitHub.

Contents

• 100 Days of YARA (#100DaysofYARA)
• Guides
• Rules
• Tools
• Services
• Syntax Highlighters
• People
• Videos and Talks
• Related Awesome Lists
• Contributing
  • Contributors

Legend

• :eyes: - Actively maintained, a repository worth watching.
• :gem: - Novel, interesting, educational, or otherwise stand-out content.
• :sparkles: - Added more recently, shiny new toys.
• :trophy: - The biggest collection award, awarded to a single repo.

100 Days of YARA (#100DaysofYARA)

An annual YARA challenge started by Greg Lesnewich in 2022, inspired by #100DaysOfCode and taking place in the first 100 days of the year. The goal is to contribute daily to the YARA community through rule creation, source code contributions, or generally teaching/help your colleagues. Other key contributors include Wesley Shields and Steve Miller. For a list of all participants in the first two years of the challenge, see our Twitter List.

Rule collections from prior years of the challenge: 100 Days of YARA

Guides

• Yara Performance Guidelines
• YARA-Style-Guide

Rules

• AlienVault Labs Rules
  • Collection of tools, signatures, and rules from the researchers at AlienVault Labs. Search the repo for .yar and .yara extensions to find about two dozen rules ranging from APT detection to generic sandbox / VM detection. Last updated in January of 2016.
• anyrun rules
  • Public YARA rules
• Apple OSX
  • Apple has ~40 YARA signatures for detecting malware on OSX. The file, XProtect.yara, is available locally at /System/Library/CoreServices/XProtect.bundle/Contents/Resources/.
• bartblaze YARA rules :eyes:
  • Collection of personal YARA rules
• BinaryAlert YARA Rules
  • A couple dozen rules written and released by AirBnB as part of their BinaryAlert tool (see next section). Detection for hack tools, malware, and ransomware across Linux, Window, and OS X. This is a new and active project.
• Burp YARA Rules
  • Collection of YARA rules intended to be used with the Burp Proxy through the Yara-Scanner extension. These rules focus mostly on non-exe malware typically delivered over HTTP including HTML, Java, Flash, Office, PDF, etc. Last updated in June of 2016.
• BinSequencer
  • Find a common pattern of bytes within a set of samples and generate a YARA rule from the identified pattern.
• CAPE Rules :eyes:
  • Rules from various authors bundled with the Config And Payload Extraction Cuckoo Sandbox extension (see next section).
• CDI Rules
  • Collection of YARA rules released by CyberDefenses for public use. Built from information in intelligence profiles, dossiers and file work.
• Citizen Lab Malware Signatures
  • YARA signatures developed by Citizen Lab. Dozens of signatures covering a variety of malware families. The also inclde a syntax file for Vim. Last update was in November of 2016.
• ConventionEngine Rules :sparkles:
  • A collection of Yara rules looking for PEs with PDB paths that have unique, unusual, or overtly malicious-looking keywords, terms, or other features.
• Deadbits Rules :eyes:
  • A collection of YARA rules made public by Adam Swanda, Splunk's Principal Threat Intel. Analyst, from his own recent malware research.
• Delivr.to Detections
  • This repo serves as a home for detection content developed by the delivr.to team.
• Didier Stevens Rules :gem:
  • Collection of rules from Didier Stevens, author of a suite of tools for inspecting OLE/RTF/PDF. Didier's rules are worth scrutinizing and are generally written purposed towards hunting. New rules are frequently announced through the NVISO Labs Blog.
• Ditekshen Rules
  • A set of interrelated network and host detection rules with the aim of improving detection and hunting visibility and context.
• Elastic Security YARA Rules
  • Elastic Security provides signature-based YARA rules within the Elastic Endpoint product. These rules are used to detect and prevent emerging threats within Linux, Windows, and macOS systems. Our repository holds over 1,000 YARA rules that are used every day to stop a wide range of threats including: Trojans, ransomware, cryptominers, attack penetration frameworks, and more.
• ESET IOCs :eyes:
  • Collection of YARA and Snort rules from IOCs collected by ESET researchers. There's about a dozen YARA Rules to glean from in this repo, search for file extension .yar. This repository is seemingly updated on a roughly monthly interval. New IOCs are often mentioned on the ESET WeLiveSecurity Blog.
• Fidelis Rules
  • You can find a half dozen YARA rules in Fidelis Cyber's IOC repository. They update this repository on a roughly quarterly interval. Complete blog content is also available in this repository.
• FireEye
  • FireEye Red Team countermeasures detection
• Florian Roth Rules :eyes: :gem:
  • Florian Roth's signature base is a frequently updated collection of IOCs and YARA rules that cover a wide range of threats. There are dozens of rules which are actively maintained. Watch the repository to see rules evolve over time to address false positives / negatives.
• Florian Roth's IDDQD Rule
  • A proof-of-concept rule that shows how easy it actually is to detect red teamer and threat group tools and code.
• f0wl yara_rules
  • A collection of Yara rules from https://dissectingmalwa.re/ blog posts.
• Frank Boldewin's Rules
  • A collection of YARA Rules from @r3c0nst.
• FSF Rules
  • Mostly filetype detection rules, from the EmersonElectricCo FSF project (see next section).
• GoDaddy ProcFilter Rules
  • A couple dozen rules written and released by GoDaddy for use with ProcFilter (see next section). Example rules include detection for packers, mimikatz, and specific malware.
• Google Cloud Threat Intelligence(GCTI) Rules
  • Rules to detect CobaltStrike framework and Sliver implant.
• h3x2b Rules :gem:
  • Collection of signatures from h3x2b which stand out in that they are generic and can be used to assist in reverse engineering. There are YARA rules for identifying crypto routines, highly entropic sections (certificate discovery for example), discovering injection / hooking functionality, and more.
• HydraDragonAntivirus :trophy:
  • World's largest open source YARA collection with no duplicates, no invalid ones and only few files. Also it contains ClamAV + YARA-X or YARA + Machine Learning + IDS canner and signatures and SUBLIME + CAPA + SIGMA signatures. Finally it has so big malware collection.
• Icewater Rules
  • Repository of automatically generated YARA rules from Icewater.io. This repository is updated rapidly with newly generated signatures that mostly match on file size range and partial content hashes.
• imp0rtp3's Rules
  • A small repository which contains some browser based rules.
• Intezer Rules :sparkles:
  • YARA rules published by Intezer Labs.
• InQuest Rules :eyes:
  • YARA rules published by InQuest researchers mostly geared towards threat hunting on Virus Total. Rules are updated as new samples are collected and novel pivots are discovered. The InQuest Blog will often discuss new findings.
• jeFF0Falltrades Rules :sparkles:
  • A collection of YARA signatures for various malware families.
• kevthehermit Rules
  • Dozens of rules from the personal collection of Kevin Breen. This repository hasn't been updated since February of 2016.
• Loginsoft Rules
  • Yara Rules for Detecting Malicious Documents targeting Microsoft Office format.
• lw-yara
  • Ruleset for scanning Linux servers for shells, spamming, phishing and other webserver baddies.
• ndaal_YARA_passwords_default
  • YARA rules includes default credentials of at least 1043 organizations which are hashed with different hash permutations such as base64, md5, sha512, etc.
• ndaal_YARA_passwords_weak
  • YARA rules includes hashed passwords of the top weak passwords. The passwords are hashed in a respective rule according to the following permutations such as base64, md5, sha512, etc.
• NCC Group Rules :eyes:
  • A handful of YARA rules released by NCC Group's Cyber Defence team.
• MalGamy's YARA_Rules
  • A small repository which contains some stealer rules.
• Malice.IO YARA Plugin Rules :eyes:
  • Collection of topical from a variety of sources for the YARA component of the Malice.IO framework.
• Malpedia Auto Generated Rules :sparkles:
  • A zip file that contains all automatically generated, code-based rules created using Malpedia's YARA-Signator
• Malpedia Auto Generated Rules Repo :sparkles:
  • Repository to simplify access to and synchronization of Malpedia's automatically generated, code-based YARA rules.
• McAfee Advanced Threat Research IOCs
  • IOCs, including YARA rules, to accompany McAfee ATR's blog and other public posts.
• McAfee Advanced Threat Research Yara-Rules
  • Repository of YARA rules made by McAfee ATR Teams.
• mikesxrs YARA Rules Collection :eyes:
  • Large collection of open source rules aggregated from a variety of sources, including blogs and other more ephemeral sources. Over 100 categories, 1500 files, 4000 rules, and 20Mb. If you're going to pull down a single repo to play with, this is the one.
• Public YARA Rules
  • Repository of Public YARA Rules.
• QuickSand Lite Rules
  • This repo contains a C framework and standalone tool for malware analysis, along with several useful YARA rules developed for use with the project.
• Rapid7-Labs
  • This repository contains a curated collection of Sigma & Yara rules and Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) shared by Rapid7 Labs.
• Rastrea2r
  • Triage suspect systems and hunt for Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) across thousands of endpoints in minutes.
• ReversingLabs YARA Rules :sparkles: :eyes:
  • A collection of yara rules published by ReversingLabs which covers exploits, infostealers, ransomware, trojans, and viruses.
• Securitymagic's YARA Rules
  • YARA rules for a variety of threats.
• Sophos AI YaraML Rules
  • A repository of Yara rules created automatically as translations of machine learning models. Each directory will have a rule and accompanying metadata: hashes of files used in training, and an accuracy diagram (a ROC curve).
• SpiderLabs Rules
  • Repository of tools and scripts related to malware analysis from the researchers at SpiderLabs. There's only three YARA rules here and the last update was back in 2015, but worth exploring.
• StrangeRealIntel's Daily IOCs :gem: :sparkles: :eyes:
  • Regularly updated YARA rules covering a variety of fresh threats.
• t4d's PhishingKit-Yara-Rules
  • This repository, dedicated to Phishing Kits zip files YARA rules, is based on zip raw format analysis to find directories and files names, you don't need yara-extend there.
• Telekom Security Malare Analysis Repository
  • This repository comprises scripts, signatures, and additional IOCs of our blog posts at the telekom.com blog.
• Tenable Rules
  • Small collection from Tenable Network Security.
• ThreatHunting-Keywords-yara-rules
  • Yara rules for Threat Hunting sessions
• [TjadaNel