IDArling is a collaborative reverse engineering plugin for IDA Pro and Hex-Rays. It allows to synchronize in real-time the changes made to a database by multiple IDA users, by connecting together different instances of IDA Pro.
It works by hooking certain events generated by one user in IDA and propagating the detected changes to other IDA users through a server architecture. It supports working from a given snapshot with changes done by other IDA users re-applied to every other user loading the same snapshot.
This project is under active development. Feel free to send a PR if you would like to help! :-)
It is stable enough to be used in its current state, but be aware of the features IDArling does not support before using it so you can save a new snapshot to work around the limitations (see below).
Note: this is a fork of https://github.com/IDArlingTeam/IDArling. The IDArlingTeam version supports IDA 7.0+ and Python2/3. Our fork only supports IDA 7.4+ and Python 3 but has more features.
Note: if you migrate from IDArlingTeam installation, you are advised to backup your old IDBs and start from a fresh new server. This is because we had to break backward compability to add certain features.
There are two different use cases:
- IDA Pro used for both the IDArling client (IDA Pro plugin) and IDArling server, by using the "Integrated Server". You can ignore the "Server-side" installation.
- IDA Pro used for the IDArling clients and a remote IDArling server. You can refer to the "Server-side" and "Client-side" installation
Python3 is required.
The IDArling server is run on a remote system from the command-line. Generally
simply running ./idarling.py is sufficient. A more advanced invocation is:
python3 idarling_server.py -h 192.168.1.1 -p 12345 --no-ssl -l DEBUG
IDA Pro 7.4+ with IDA Python 3 is supported.
Install the IDArling client into the IDA plugins folder.
- Copy
idarling_plugin.pyand theidarlingfolder to the IDA plugins folder.- On Windows, the folder is at
C:\Program Files\IDA 7.x\plugins - On macOS, the folder is at
/Applications/IDA Pro 7.x/idabin/plugins - On Linux, the folder may be at
~/ida-7.x/plugins/
- On Windows, the folder is at
- Alternatively, you can use the IDAUSR folder such as
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Hex-Rays\IDA Pro\pluginson Windows. - Alternatively, you can use the "easy install" method by copying the following line into the console:
import urllib2; exec(urllib2.urlopen('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fidgetingbits/IDArling/master/easy_install.py')).read()
To enable the dedicated server, you can choose "Dedicated Server" after right-clicking the IDArling widget located in the status bar.
The dedicated server requires PyQt5, which is integrated into IDA. If you're
using an external Python installation, we recommand using Python 3, which offers
a pre-built package that can be installed with a simple pip install PyQt5.
Open the "Settings" dialog accessible from the right-clicking the IDArling widget located in the status bar. Show the servers list by clicking on the "Network Settings" tabs and add your server to it. Connect to the server by clicking on it after right-clicking the widget again. Finally, you should be able to access the following menus to upload or download a database:
- File --> Open from server
- File --> Save to server
The main features of IDArling (advertised originally) are:
- hooking general user events
- structure and enumeration support
- Hex-Rays decompiler syncing
- replay engine and auto-saving
- database loading and saving
- interactive status bar widget
- user cursors (instructions, functions, navbar)
- invite and following an user moves
- dedicated server using Qt5
- integrated server within IDA
- LAN servers discovery
- following an user moves in real time
In order to understand what change is actually synced vs not synced, it is worth mentioning some implementation details.
We like to define the following terms in the IDArling jargon:
- group: a group correspond to a researched topic such as a given CVE, malware family, etc. regrouping several projects
- project: a project correspond to a given file to analyse (i.e. unique SHA-256 hash)
- database: a database is a snapshot of an IDB as a given time. It is used as a baseline to apply any change made from this snapshot by any other IDA user
In general, the first thing is to create a group for the research topic you are
starting. Then, you create a project to analyse a given file with a unique hash (e.g. ntoskrnl.exe
on Windows 10 1809 x64 from May 2019) and then you create one initial database.
All the changes made for this IDB can leave in the same database as long as all
the changes you do are synced. However, if there are some major changes that are
not synced by IDArling, you need to create an additional database to save them
and all users SHOULD then use the latest database.
In general, it is better to always start from the latest database (i.e. snapshot) for a given project when you start working from the IDArling server, except if you know what you are doing.
If you locally update your IDB with a new type in IDA and save it to a new snapshot, you are NOT REQUIRED to then close and open the new snapshot that you saved to the database. You can keep working from your existing already-opened snapshot. The only exception to this would be if someone else simultaneously updated their own IDB and uploaded a new snapshot.
In general, the changes applied to a given snapshot are retrieved the next time you open the latest snapshot as the events will be propagated to the base IDB.
- Syncs variable names in Hex-Rays
- Syncs comments in Hex-Rays
- Syncs function prototype edits in both IDA and Hex-Rays
- Syncs integer type (hex / integer / binary / enum) changes in both IDA and Hex-Rays
- Manually creating an enum and pasting in the code will actually sync across IDBs
These changes typically require you to create a new database (i.e. snapshot, as explained above) so you don't lose your changes. It is typically the case for actions that do not generate events that IDArling can catch and propagate.
- Importing a new header file ("File > Load file > Parse C header file"): If we know we are going to have to import C headers, we want to do it on one system and then save the snapshot, because we're unable to sync those.
- Upgrading IDA version
- adding a new type: If you add a new type that is a pointer or another type that doesn't sync to the struct or enum tabs, you MUST save a new database
- Converting raw data to code
- Sync notepad (github #79)
- Local types from header imports or local types at all that are not structs or enums
- Opcode settings (Options > General > Number of opcode bytes) don't sync
- IDA uses a type ID when creating new structures, but the type IDs themselves aren't synced, which can cause type mismatch. Basically when adding a pointer type, they are kept only in local types and they are not added to the structure or enum tab, so don't sync and/or generate events. This means that one persons IDB has a type ID defined in local types, but the other user won't, so when the other user inevitably adds their own new type themselves, their new type ID will conflict with the original users pointer type.
This project is inspired by Sol[IDA]rity. It started after contacting its authors and asking if it was ever going to be released to the public. Lighthouse source code was also carefully studied to understand how to write better IDA plugins.
- Previous plugins, namely CollabREate, IDASynergy, YaCo, were studied during the development process;
- The icons are edited and combined versions from the sites freeiconshop.com and www.iconsplace.com.
Thanks to Quarkslab for allowing this release.
- Alexandre Adamski <neat@idarling.re>
- Joffrey Guilbon <patate@idarling.re>
- Cedric Halbronn (@saidelike)
- Aaron Adams (@FidgetingBits)
If you have any questions not worthy of a bug report, feel free to ping us at #idarling on freenode and ask away.