capa explorer is an IDAPython plugin that integrates the FLARE team's open-source framework, capa, with IDA Pro. capa is a framework that uses a well-defined collection of rules to identify capabilities in a program. You can run capa against a PE file, ELF file, or shellcode and it tells you what it thinks the program can do. For example, it might suggest that the program is a backdoor, can install services, or relies on HTTP to communicate. capa explorer runs capa analysis on your IDA Pro database (IDB) without needing access to the original binary file. Once a database has been analyzed, capa explorer helps you identify interesting areas of a program and build new capa rules using features extracted from your IDB.

We love using capa explorer during malware analysis because it teaches us what parts of a program suggest a behavior. As we click on rows, capa explorer jumps directly to important addresses in the IDB and highlights key features in the Disassembly view so they stand out visually. To illustrate, we use capa explorer to analyze Lab 14-02 from Practical Malware Analysis (PMA) available here. Our goal is to understand the program's functionality.

After loading Lab 14-02 into IDA and analyzing the database with capa explorer, we see that capa detected a rule match for self delete via COMSPEC environment variable:

We can use capa explorer to navigate our Disassembly view directly to the suspect function and get an assembly-level breakdown of why capa matched self delete via COMSPEC environment variable.

Using the Rule Information and Details columns capa explorer shows us that the suspect function matched self delete via COMSPEC environment variable because it contains capa rule matches for create process, get COMSPEC environment variable, and query environment variable, references to the strings COMSPEC, > nul, and /c del , and calls to the Windows API functions GetEnvironmentVariableA and ShellExecuteEx.

capa explorer also helps you build and test new capa rules. To start, select the Rule Generator tab, navigate to a function in your Disassembly view, and click Analyze. capa explorer will extract features from the function and display them in the Features pane. You can add features listed in this pane to the Editor pane by either double-clicking a feature or using multi-select + right-click to add multiple features at once. The Preview and Editor panes help edit your rule. Use the Preview pane to modify rule text directly and the Editor pane to construct and rearrange your hierarchy of statements and features. When you finish a rule you can save it directly to a file by clicking Save.

For more information on the FLARE team's open-source framework, capa, check out the overview in our first blog.

Getting Started

Installation

You can install capa explorer using the following steps:

Install capa and its dependencies from PyPI using the Python interpreter configured for your IDA installation:
```
$ pip install flare-capa
```
Download and extract the official capa rules that match the version of capa you have installed
1. Use the following command to view the version of capa you have installed:
```
 $ pip show flare-capa
 OR
 $ capa --version
```
Copy capa_explorer.py to your IDA plugins directory
- find your plugin directories via idaapi.get_ida_subdirs("plugins") or see this Hex-Rays blog
- common paths are %APPDATA%\Hex-Rays\IDA Pro\plugins (Windows) or $HOME/.idapro/plugins on Linux/Mac

Supported File Types

capa explorer is limited to the file types supported by capa, which include:

Windows x86 (32- and 64-bit) PE files
Windows x86 (32- and 64-bit) shellcode
ELF files on various operating systems

Usage

Open IDA and analyze a supported file type (select the Manual Load and Load Resources options in IDA for best results)
Open capa explorer in IDA by navigating to Edit > Plugins > FLARE capa explorer or using the keyboard shortcut Alt+F5 You can also use ida_loader.load_and_run_plugin("capa_explorer", arg). arg is a bitflag for which setting the LSB enables automatic analysis. See capa.ida.plugin.form.Options for more details.
Select the Program Analysis tab
Click the Analyze button

The first time you run capa explorer you will be asked to specify a local directory containing capa rules to use for analysis. We recommend downloading and extracting the official capa rules that match the version of capa you have installed (see installation instructions above for more details). capa explorer remembers your selection for future analysis which you can update using the Settings button.

Tips for Program Analysis

Start analysis by clicking the Analyze button
- capa explorer caches results to the database and reuses them across IDA sessions
Reset the plugin user interface and remove highlighting from your Disassembly view by clicking the Reset button
Change your local capa rules directory, auto analysis settings, and other default settings by clicking the Settings button
Hover your cursor over a rule match to view the source content of the rule
Double-click the Address column to navigate your Disassembly view to the address of the associated feature
Double-click a result in the Rule Information column to expand its children
Select a checkbox in the Rule Information column to highlight the address of the associated feature in your Disassembly view
Reanalyze if you renamed global variables that store dynamically resolved APIs. capa will use these to improve its analysis.

Tips for Rule Generator

Navigate to a function in your Disassembly view and clickAnalyze to get started
Double-click or use multi-select + right-click to add features from the Features pane to the Editor pane
Right-click features in the Editor pane to make context-specific modifications
Drag-and-drop (single click + multi-select support) features in the Editor pane to construct your hierarchy of statements and features
Right-click anywhere in the Editor pane not on a feature to remove all features
Add descriptions or comments to a feature by editing the corresponding column in the Editor pane
Directly edit rule text and metadata fields using the Preview pane
Change the default rule author and default rule scope displayed in the Preview pane by clicking Settings

Requirements

capa explorer supports Python versions >= 3.10 and IDA Pro versions >= 7.4. The following IDA Pro versions have been tested:

IDA 7.4
IDA 7.5
IDA 7.6 Service Pack 1
IDA 7.7
IDA 8.0
IDA 8.1
IDA 8.2
IDA 9.0

capa explorer is however limited to the Python versions supported by your IDA installation (which may not include all Python versions >= 3.10).

If you encounter issues with your specific setup, please open a new Issue.

Development

capa explorer is packaged with capa so you will need to install capa locally for development. You can install capa locally by following the steps outlined in Method 3: Inspecting the capa source code of the capa installation guide. Once installed, copy capa_explorer.py to your plugins directory to install capa explorer in IDA.

Components

capa explorer consists of two main components:

An feature extractor built on top of IDA's binary analysis engine
- This component uses IDAPython to extract capa features from your IDBs such as strings, disassembly, and control flow; these extracted features are used by capa to find feature combinations that result in a rule match
An interactive user interface for displaying and exploring capa rule matches
- This component integrates the feature extractor and capa, providing an interactive user interface to dissect rule matches found by capa using features extracted directly from your IDBs