An open-source and free to use executable files static analyzer. Detects a range of various issues, which are usually out of reach of other tools (such as static code analysis).
When developing desktop software, compilers and static code analysis tools only warn about issues with the code itself. However, when built into a binary, compiled code is surrounded by various structures which tell the operating system how to run the executable file. They also contain a lot of auxiliary information, such as version descriptions or digital signatures. These extra structures are not normally analyzed by any tools. Alas, this does not mean they can not contain any errors or security issues! And in fact, they often do. To reveal these issues and to get guidance on how to fix them, you can use tools like Binary Valentine.
Website: https://binary-valentine.com
Documentation: https://binary-valentine.com/docs
- Provides both the compatible command line and the GUI executables. Also provides the project editor UI.
- Finds bugs, misconfigurations, format and security issues related to the executable format and not the code compiled into it. Suggests security hardening and optimization techniques.
- Supports flexible project configuration (file path, rule filters), which can be supplied as a separate file or in the command line.
- Supports several report formats (terminal output, plain text, SARIF, HTML).
- Supports both single executable rules and combined (cross-executable) rules.
- Easily to include in the SSDLC (Secure Software Development Lifecycle).
- Multithreaded and fast. With the fast SSD drive, scans the whole Windows 10
System32folder in 10-20 seconds.
All Windows executable files use Portable Executable format. Some other systems like EFI and X-Box also use it. Binary Valentine detects the following issues:
- Security issues, such as absent hardening options (e.g. ASLR), insecure configurations (e.g. writable code sections), or usage of dangerous WinAPI functions.
- Configuration issues, for example, version information bugs, application icon and manifest issues.
- Optimization issues, which could be addressed to make the executable faster or smaller (e.g. profile-guided optimization usage).
- System issues, which are related to the operating system misuse, such as deprecated or internal WinAPI usage, system compatibility issues, and DPI awareness.
- Format issues, which are related to the PE format itself.
For Portable Executable, more than 190 rules are currently provided. Most rules are single-executable, but some of them do combined scans (e.g., version info cross-executable consistency check rules).
For Electron applications, Binary Valentine provides a couple of rules which check that the Electron version used to build an application is recent and is not a preview.
An XML project file can be supplied to Binary Valentine, which would scan the project according to selected rules and filters. Binary Valentine provides an intuitive UI to create and edit projects files.
A project can contain one or more files or directories to scan (with optional regular expressions to filter path names). Each path or file can be configured with a separate set of applied rules, warning levels, and categories. Apart from that, XML projects can specify output format and execution options (e.g. thread count and max memory consumption limit).
In addition to project-based execution, Binary Valentine can be invoked by supplying all parameters to its command line.
Binary Valentine supports several output formats to ease integration with other systems. In addition to terminal, plain text, and HTML reports, it supports the Static Analysis Results Interchange Format (SARIF) 2.1.0, which is the industry standard format for the output of static analysis tools.
In addition to the command line, Binary Valentine provides a fully featured graphical user interface, which allows to perform executable files analysis in real time! It is also a Binary Valentine project editor, allowing to create, edit, save and load projects without manually writing XML.
Binary Valentine can be built for a range of platforms with a set of C++20 compilers:
- Windows 10/11, MSVC 2022 (Visual Studio solution and CMake build are provided)
- Linux, GCC 13.0 (CMake build)
- Linux, Clang 16 (CMake build)
Windows 10/11 and modern Linux (kernel version 5.1 or newer with io_uring enabled) are supported as of today.
For detailed command line documentation, see the website: https://binary-valentine.com/docs/usage/command-line
General options:
-h [ --help ] Print options description
-c [ --config ] arg Path to external XML configuration file.
Can not be used with any other options.
-r [ --root-path ] arg Root path. This path will be used as a
root for all relative paths specified.
If absent, current directory will be
used as a root path.
--threads arg Analysis thread count. If absent,
hardware core number will be used.
--max-loaded-targets-size arg (=1G) Max loaded targets size. If specified,
the analyzer will preload as many
targets to analyze as possible until
their size in memory is less than the
value specified.Should have a numeric
value together with the suffix (B -
bytes, K - kilobytes, M - megabytes, G -
gigabytes), e.g. 2G for 2 gigabytes.
Can not be used together with
--max-concurrent-tasks.
Default is 1G.
--max-concurrent-tasks arg Max concurrent analysis tasks. If
specified, the analyzer will preload at
most max-concurrent-tasks targets for
analysis.
Can not be used together with
--max-loaded-targets-size.
Combined analysis options:
--do-combined-analysis arg (=1) Do combined analysis of all specified
targets. Default is true.
Targets options:
-t [ --target ] arg Target file or directory to analyze.
Required.
--recursive arg (=1) Scan and analyze the target directory
recursively. Default is true.
--include-regex arg Analyze only targets with full paths
which match the provided ECMAScript
regex.
--exclude-regex arg Analyze only targets with full paths
which do not match the provided
ECMAScript regex.
Report options:
--exclude-reports arg Exclude reports with the IDs listed. Can
not be used together with
--include-reports.
--include-reports arg Include only reports with the IDs
listed. Can not be used together with
--exclude-reports.
--list-reports List all supported reports with brief
descriptions.
--exclude-levels arg Exclude report levels (info, warning,
error, critical).
--exclude-categories arg Exclude report categories (system,
optimization, security, configuration,
format).
--with-progress Report verbose analysis progress
Output options:
--silent Do not output analysis results to
terminal.
-S [ --sarif ] arg Path to save the output report in SARIF
format.
-T [ --text ] arg Path to save the output report in
plaintext.