capa-rs — File Capability Extractor

Try it online: https://www.analyze.rs/

capa-rs detects capabilities in executable files. Point it at a PE, ELF, Mach-O, .NET binary, or raw shellcode and it tells you what the program can do — for example, that the file is a backdoor, installs Windows services, communicates over HTTP, or uses RC4. It also runs a binary-security checklist (ASLR, NX, stack canary, CFG, etc.).

This is a Rust port of Mandiant's Python capa without the IDA / Ghidra plugins — a pure library that emits capability reports. The bundled capa_cli example wraps it as a command-line tool. Rules come from the official capa-rules repository.

Quick start

[dependencies]
capa = "0.4"

use capa::{BinarySecurityCheckOptions, FileCapabilities};

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let mut fc = FileCapabilities::analyze()
        .rules("path/to/capa-rules")
        .high_accuracy(true)
        .resolve_tailcalls(true)
        .security_checks(BinarySecurityCheckOptions::default())
        .from_file("Sample.exe")?;

    let json = fc.serialize_file_capabilities(None)?;
    println!("{}", json);
    Ok(())
}

.rules(...) is the only required setter. All other builder methods default to off / no-op — most callers only need a couple of them.

CLI example

$ capa_cli --rules-path capa-rules data/Demo64.dll
+--------------+-------------+
|      File Properties       |
+==============+=============+
| arch         | AMD64       |
+--------------+-------------+
| base_address | 0x180000000 |
+--------------+-------------+
| format       | PE          |
+--------------+-------------+
| os           | WINDOWS     |
+--------------+-------------+

+-----------------------+-------------+
|           Security Checks           |
+=======================+=============+
| ASLR                  | Supported   |
| CHECKSUM              | Fail        |
| CONTROL-FLOW-GUARD    | Unsupported |
| DATA-EXEC-PREVENT     | Pass        |
| SAFE-SEH              | Pass        |
| VERIFY-DIGITAL-CERT   | Fail        |
+-----------------------+-------------+

+---------------+------------------------+
| ATT&CK Tactic | ATT&CK Technique       |
+===============+========================+
| Execution     | Shared Modules [T1129] |
+---------------+------------------------+

+----------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| Capability                       | Namespace                                       |
+----------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| check for software breakpoints   | anti-analysis/anti-debugging/debugger-detection |
| contains PDB path                | executable/pe/pdb                               |
| hash data using djb2             | data-manipulation/hashing/djb2                  |
| match known PlugX module         | malware-family/plugx                            |
+----------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+

TAGS: [B0001.025, C0030.001, C0030.006, T1129]

Verbose mode adds per-function feature + capability tables:

capa_cli --rules-path capa-rules --verbose data/Demo64.dll

Shellcode / raw-buffer analysis

For payloads with no PE/ELF/Mach-O header — shellcode, unpacked modules, memory dumps — use the builder's .from_buffer(...) terminal instead of .from_file(...):

use capa::FileCapabilities;

let shellcode = std::fs::read("payload.bin")?;
let fc = FileCapabilities::analyze()
    .rules("path/to/capa-rules")
    .high_accuracy(true)
    .resolve_tailcalls(true)
    .from_buffer(&shellcode, 0x1000, 64)?;  // base_addr, bitness

The shellcode is treated as a single section mapped at base_addr. dnfile and the security-checks pipeline are skipped (no PE/ELF header to inspect).

PDB metadata (symbol-server lookup)

For PE inputs with a CodeView debug record, FileCapabilities.properties exposes pdb_guid, pdb_age, and pdb_filename — the keys Microsoft SymSrv / Mozilla / Chromium symbol stores look up. Fields are omitted from the JSON output when the input has no debug directory or isn't a PE.

Features

The crate ships two cargo features:

• properties (default) — file metadata (architecture, base address, format, OS) on FileCapabilities.
• verbose — per-function feature / capability breakdown on FileCapabilities.

Build combinations:

cargo build                                # default = properties
cargo build --features verbose             # verbose only
cargo build --features verbose,properties  # both

Requirements

• Rust 1.95 or newer (2024 edition).
• No C/C++ toolchain — pure Rust.

Architecture

┌──────────────────────────────┐
│  FileCapabilities (capa-rs)  │  rules engine, capability matching,
│  src/lib.rs                  │  rendering, security checks
└──────────────┬───────────────┘
               │
               ├──► src/extractor/smda.rs ───► smda 0.5  (PE / ELF / Mach-O /
               │                                          shellcode disassembly,
               │                                          function names, hashes,
               │                                          PDB debug-directory)
               └──► src/extractor/dnfile.rs ──► dnfile 0.4 (.NET CLR metadata)

Related crates in this ecosystem

• smda — recursive x86/x64 disassembler (zero-copy, iced-x86 backend).
• dnfile — .NET CLR metadata parser (zero-copy).

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE.