YARA-X Rule Authoring

Write detection rules that catch malware without drowning in false positives.

This skill targets YARA-X, the Rust-based successor to legacy YARA — 5-10x faster regex, better errors, built-in formatter, stricter validation, new modules (crx, dex), 99% rule compatibility. It powers VirusTotal's production systems. Install with brew install yara-x or cargo install yara-x; the CLI is yr. See Migrating from Legacy YARA for existing rules.

Core Principles

1. Strings must generate good atoms — YARA extracts 4-byte subsequences for fast matching. Strings with repeated bytes, common sequences, or under 4 bytes force slow bytecode verification on too many files.

2. Target specific families, not categories — "Detects ransomware" catches everything and nothing. "Detects LockBit 3.0 configuration extraction routine" catches what you want.

3. Test against goodware before deployment — A rule that fires on Windows system files is useless. Validate against VirusTotal's goodware corpus or your own clean file set.

4. Short-circuit with cheap checks first — filesize (instant), then magic bytes (nearly instant), then strings (cheap), then modules (expensive).

5. Metadata is documentation — Future you (and your team) need to know what this catches, why, and where the sample came from.

When to Use