YARA Unchained: Modern Detection Engineering for Blue Teamers

This workshop is designed to elevate the capabilities of security analysts, transitioning from a static signature-based approach to dynamic and resilient detection engineering, integrating the most advanced tools available in 2026.

Workshop Contents

Module 1: The Cybersecurity Ecosystem and the Role of YARA

Before diving into the syntax, we will set the strategic context where YARA acts as the connecting tissue of defense operations:

Incident Response (IR): YARA as a fast “triage” tool to identify compromised hosts and determine the scope of a breach.
Threat Hunting: Hypothesis creation based on behaviors to search for “live” threats that have evaded traditional security controls.
Malware Analysis: Using YARA for family classification, identifying specific functionalities, and discovering similarities between samples.
Threat Intelligence (CTI): How to transform tactical and technical reports into operational detections to prevent future attacks.
Value Map: Identifying at which stage of each process YARA provides the greatest competitive advantage for the Blue Team.

Module 2: High-Fidelity Fundamentals and Syntax

What is YARA? Origin, “pattern matching” philosophy, and anatomy of a rule (Meta, Strings, Condition).
Advanced Syntax: Mastering modifiers to capture malware variants.
Condition Engineering: Writing efficient logic to minimize CPU impact and optimize scans in production environments.
Structural Detection with Modules:
- PE Module: Using imphash, sections, and resources to detect malware families.
- ELF Module: Signatures for threats in Linux environments and containers.
- Math Module: Calculating entropy to identify packers and encrypted files.

Module 3: Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) with Gemini

Gemini as Copilot: Prompt engineering for automatic pattern extraction from disassembled code and intelligence reports.
Translating CTI to YARA: Automating the workflow: from a security blog post to a functional rule in seconds.
The Human Factor (QA): Manual review techniques to correct AI hallucinations and refine detection logic.

Module 4: Threat Hunting in Memory (Volatility 3, Velociraptor)

Modern Forensic Analysis: Transitioning from outdated tools to Volatility 3.
Lifeless Detection: Identifying code injections, reflective DLLs, and hidden processes in RAM dumps.
Beacon Hunting: Locating command and control (C2) beacons using YARA signatures applied to active processes.

Module 5: Network Visibility and Detection (Zeek)

Traffic Analysis with YARAZeek: Implementing the author’s tool for extracting and analyzing files in transit.
PCAP Inspection: Techniques for feeding back network detection by analyzing historical capture files.
Exfiltration Detection: Using YARA to identify patterns of sensitive data leaving through common protocols.

Module 6: Global Ecosystem and Scalability

VirusTotal Retrohunt: Validating rules against petabytes of historical samples to measure effectiveness and reach.
VirusTotal Livehunt: Proactively adding rules to receive notifications as soon as samples from the family of interest are uploaded.
Fighting False Positives:
- Creating and maintaining “Goodware” repositories.
- Filtering strategies to avoid unnecessary alerts in the SOC.
Response Automation: Integrating YARA scans into incident response (IR) pipelines and conceptual integration with EDRs.