How To Install yara on CentOS 8

yara is Pattern matching Swiss knife for malware researchers

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install yara on CentOS 8.

What is yara

YARA is a tool aimed at (but not limited to) helping malware researchers to identify and classify malware samples. With YARA you can create descriptions of malware families (or whatever you want to describe) based on textual or binary patterns. Each description, a.k.a rule, consists of a set of strings and a Boolean expression which determine its logic.

We can use yum or dnf to install yara on CentOS 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install yara.

Install yara on CentOS 8 Using dnf

Update yum database with dnf using the following command.

sudo dnf makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install yara using dnf by running the following command:

sudo dnf -y install yara

Install yara on CentOS 8 Using yum

Update yum database with yum using the following command.

sudo yum makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install yara using yum by running the following command:

sudo yum -y install yara

How To Uninstall yara on CentOS 8

To uninstall only the yara package we can use the following command:

sudo dnf remove yara

yara Package Contents on CentOS 8

/usr/bin/yara
/usr/bin/yarac
/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/a9
/usr/lib/.build-id/a9/3eca260fabed5f3fd1c29ae6cbb386455591c7
/usr/lib/.build-id/ac
/usr/lib/.build-id/ac/6fc559ad30980eadcb0fbf1a4942d7010a98a1
/usr/lib/.build-id/fe
/usr/lib/.build-id/fe/3eb6032c800d446b1ddc6266562d0a35ad9927
/usr/lib64/libyara.so.8
/usr/lib64/libyara.so.8.0.0
/usr/share/doc/yara
/usr/share/doc/yara/AUTHORS
/usr/share/doc/yara/CONTRIBUTORS
/usr/share/doc/yara/README.md
/usr/share/licenses/yara
/usr/share/licenses/yara/COPYING
/usr/share/man/man1/yara.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/yarac.1.gz

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install yara on CentOS 8 using yum and dnf.