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yara

Pattern matching swiss knife for malware researchers

forensicsBlue Team
Official docs ↗Download ↗Source repo ↗

Platforms: Linux · Last verified September 6, 2026

YARA is a tool aimed at helping malware researchers to identify and classify malware samples. With YARA, it is possible to create descriptions of malware families based on textual or binary patterns contained in samples of those families. Each description consists of a set of strings and a Boolean expression which determines its logic.

Only use this tool against systems you own or are explicitly authorized to test — see the disclaimer.

Getting started

See the official Kali tool page and upstream homepage linked above for installation and usage details.

Commonly preinstalled on

Kali Linux

Debian-based distribution built for penetration testing and security auditing