augur

"In fact, I've actually triggered buffer overflows by just entering my real name."

-- A.

Augur is a blazing fast IDA headless plugin that extracts strings and related pseudocode from a binary file. It stores pseudocode of functions that reference strings in an organized directory tree.

Features

• Blazing fast, headless user experience courtesy of IDA 9.x and idalib-rs Rust bindings.
• Support for binary targets for any architecture implemented by IDA's Hex-Rays decompiler.
• Decompilation feature based on the decompile_to_file API exported by haruspex.
• Pseudocode of each function that references a specific string is stored in a separate directory.

Articles

• https://hex-rays.com/blog/streamlining-vulnerability-research-idalib-rust-bindings
• https://hnsecurity.it/blog/streamlining-vulnerability-research-with-ida-pro-and-rust

See also

• https://github.com/0xdea/rhabdomancer
• https://github.com/0xdea/haruspex
• https://docs.hex-rays.com/release-notes/9_0#headless-processing-with-idalib
• https://github.com/idalib-rs/idalib

Installing

The easiest way to get the latest release is via crates.io:

1. Download, install, and configure IDA (see https://hex-rays.com/ida-pro).
2. Install LLVM/Clang (see https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-bindgen/requirements.html).
3. On Linux/macOS, install as follows:

   export IDADIR=/path/to/ida # if not set, the build script will check common locations
   cargo install augur

   On Windows, instead, use the following commands:

   $env:LIBCLANG_PATH="\path\to\clang+llvm\bin"
   $env:PATH="\path\to\ida;$env:PATH"
   $env:IDADIR="\path\to\ida" # if not set, the build script will check common locations
   cargo install augur

Compiling

Alternatively, you can build from source:

1. Download, install, and configure IDA (see https://hex-rays.com/ida-pro).
2. Install LLVM/Clang (see https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-bindgen/requirements.html).
3. On Linux/macOS, compile as follows:

   git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/0xdea/augur
   cd augur
   export IDADIR=/path/to/ida # if not set, the build script will check common locations
   cargo build --release

   On Windows, instead, use the following commands:

   git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/0xdea/augur
   cd augur
   $env:LIBCLANG_PATH="\path\to\clang+llvm\bin"
   $env:PATH="\path\to\ida;$env:PATH"
   $env:IDADIR="\path\to\ida" # if not set, the build script will check common locations
   cargo build --release

Usage

1. Make sure IDA is properly configured with a valid license.
2. Make sure the IDADIR environment variable is set if your IDA installation is in a non-standard location.
3. Run as follows:

   augur <binary_file>

4. Find the extracted pseudocode of each decompiled function in the binary_file.str directory, organized by string:

   vim <binary_file>.str
   code <binary_file>.str

Compatibility

Only the latest IDA release is officially supported, but older versions may work as well. The following table summarizes the latest compatible release for each IDA version:

IDA version	Latest compatible release
v9.0.241217	v0.2.3
v9.1.250226	v0.6.2
v9.2.250908	v0.7.5
v9.3.260213	v0.8.1
v9.3.260327	v0.9.0
v9.3.260421	v0.9.3
v9.4.260714	current release

Note

Check the idalib-rs documentation for additional information.

Credits

This project's development has been supported by the following organizations:

• HN Security
• Hex-Rays via their Contributor Program

Changelog

• CHANGELOG.md

TODO

• Integrate with oneiromancer.
• Allow users to choose to process string cross-references even if the decompiler is unavailable.
• Consider integrating proptest to complement unit testing.
• Implement functionality similar to https://github.com/joxeankoret/idamagicstrings.