A specialized skill for authoring high-performance YARA-X rules to detect malware while minimizing false positives.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install yara-authoring
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install yara-authoring using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is YARA-X Rule Authoring?
YARA-X Rule Authoring is a technical framework designed for security researchers and malware analysts to create precise detection signatures. This skill leverages YARA-X, the high-performance Rust-based successor to legacy YARA, offering significantly faster scanning speeds and more robust validation. It focuses on the Trail of Bits methodology to ensure that rules are not only effective at catching specific malware families but are also optimized for computational efficiency.
By following these Openclaw Skills, developers can master advanced techniques like atom selection, string optimization, and module usage for PE, ELF, and Mach-O files. The skill emphasizes a shift from broad, category-based detection to specific, family-oriented hunting, ensuring that your detection engineering workflow is both scalable and accurate.
YARA-X Rule Authoring Use Cases
- Creating custom detection rules for specific malware families like Emotet or Cobalt Strike.
- Automating the validation and formatting of YARA rules within a CI/CD pipeline.
- Optimizing scanning performance for large-scale file repositories or high-traffic network streams.
- Reducing false positives in threat hunting operations by implementing short-circuit logic and goodware testing.
- Documenting threat intelligence using standardized metadata and TLP markings.
How YARA-X Rule Authoring Works
- Analyze a malware sample to identify unique byte sequences, mutexes, PDB paths, or C2 URLs.
- Draft the YARA-X rule using the standardized naming convention (Family_Variant_Technique) and metadata schema.
- Implement performance-first conditions, placing cheap magic byte and filesize checks at the beginning of the logic.
- Use the yr check command to validate syntax and the yr fmt command to ensure code consistency.
- Execute scans against the target sample and a known goodware corpus to verify detection and rule out false positives.
YARA-X Rule Authoring Setup
To begin using these Openclaw Skills for rule development, install the YARA-X toolset using your preferred package manager:
# Install via Homebrew
brew install yara-x
# Or install via Cargo
cargo install yara-x
Verify the installation by running yr --version to ensure you are ready to use the compiler and scanner.
YARA-X Rule Authoring Data Schema & Taxonomy
The skill organizes detection data through a structured YARA-X rule file format. Each rule follows a specific taxonomy:
| Section | Description | Key Elements |
|---|---|---|
| Meta | Documentation and TLP | Author, date, hash, confidence score, and references. |
| Strings | The detection payload | Hex sequences, regex, and optimized ASCII/Wide strings. |
| Condition | Logical triggers | Magic bytes, filesize, and module-specific logic (e.g., pe.imports). |
Rules are stored with the .yar extension and can be managed in a directory structure optimized for the yr scan command.
YARA-X Rule Authoring Advanced Features
- Multi-platform support for PE (Windows), ELF (Linux), Mach-O (macOS), and PDF formats.
- Built-in YARA-X formatter (
yr fmt) for maintaining clean, readable codebases. - Integration with specialized modules like crx and dex for browser extension and Android analysis.
- Short-circuiting logic for high-speed scanning of terabyte-scale datasets.
- Advanced hex string pattern matching with wildcards and jump sequences.
SKILL.md
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