YARA Rules for Malware Detection
Write YARA rules based on strings, byte patterns, and file structure to detect malware families.
What is YARA?
YARA is a pattern-matching tool designed for malware classification. Rules describe families by combining string patterns, byte sequences, and boolean conditions. YARA scans files, processes, or memory and reports matches.
YARA Rule Structure
A rule has three sections: meta (metadata like author and date), strings (patterns to find), and condition (boolean logic combining strings). Rules are compiled into a scanner for fast file-system sweeps.
rule ExampleRule {
meta:
author = "analyst"
strings:
$a = "malicious_string"
$b = { 4D 5A 90 00 }
condition:
$a and $b
}