Pattern-matching tools for chasing down malicious software
Gate Search
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The big antivirus companies offer a myriad of malware scanning utilities, but it is often difficult to see what they are really doing or to customize them for specific needs. Beyond the giants are a class of more versatile tools that let you choose the rulesets – and even write your own rules.
The words virus and malware are often used in the same breath, although they refer to different things. Malicious software (typically shortened to "malware") covers a vast array of unwelcome software threats that fall into multiple categories. The term malware essentially refers to any code designed to cause harm. A virus, on the other hand, is a type of malware that generally becomes active when a legitimate piece of software is executed. Like a real virus, a software virus has a way of replicating, allowing it to spread to any system it is capable of infecting.
In this article, I will look at software that allows anyone familiar with Linux and a willingness to learn to create rules for detecting and classifying malware.
YARA
YARA [1] is provided by VirusTotal [2] and is released under the permissive BSD 3-Clause "New" License, which means that you can use it for commercial purposes [3]. Google acquired VirusTotal in 2012 [4]. The name YARA apparently stands for "Yet Another Ridiculous Acronym"!
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