Synopsis

YaCo is an Hex-Rays IDA plugin. When enabled, multiple users can work simultaneously on the same binary. Any modification done by any user is synchronized through git version control.

Motivation

IDA does not allow multiple users to work on the same binary. During large malware analysis, we had to use a team of reversers and manual synchronization is a tedious and error-prone process.

YaCo goals are:

• to support all IDA events (renaming, structure mapping, ...)
• to be fast (users do not want to wait when working)
• to prevent conflicts between user modifications
• to be easy to setup and easy to use

Installation

Debian stretch/x64

As IDA is a 32bits software, YaCo must be built for 32 bits architecture.

Install dependencies

sudo apt install build-essential git cmake g++-multilib

Add i386 architecture and install dependencies

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libpython2.7-dev:i386

Set IDA_DIR & IDASDK_DIR environment variables

export IDA_DIR=/opt/ida6.8/
export IDASDK_DIR=/opt/idasdk/

Clone, configure & build YaCo

~/YaCo (master) $ cd build
~/YaCo/build (master) $ ./configure.sh
~/YaCo/build (master) $ pushd ../out/x86_64_Release
~/YaCo/out/x86_64_Release (master) $ make -j4
~/YaCo/out/x86_64_Release (master) $ pushd $IDA_DIR/plugin
$IDA_DIR/plugin $ ~/YaCo/build/deploy.sh

Windows

CMake must be installed and in the PATH Only visual studio 2015 is currently supported

Configure and build YaCo

set IDA_DIR=C:\Program Files (x86)\IDA Pro 6.8
set IDASDK_DIR=C:\idasdk68
build> configure_2015.cmd
out/x86> cmake --build . --config RelWithDebInfo
out/x86> ctest . --output-on-failure -C RelWithDebInfo -j4

Usage

First user

To create the YaCo environment:

1. open binary or idb file as usual
2. click on Edit menu, Plugins, YaCo
3. enter path to git remote (could be a file system path, or empty to use current dir)
4. a warning will inform you that IDA have to be re-launch with correct idb
5. IDA auto close
6. launch IDA for your FILE_local.idb file
7. save database
8. start working as usual

Warning, to use with multiple user, YaCo project must be in a bare git project.

Other users

Setup YaCo environment:

1. clone a YaCo project
2. open idb/i64 file with ida
3. click on Edit menu, Plugins, YaCo
4. a warning will inform you that IDA have to be re-launch with correct idb
5. IDA auto close
6. launch IDA for your FILE_local.idb file
7. save database
8. start working as usual

Contributors

• Benoît Amiaux
• Frederic Grelot
• Jeremy Bouetard
• Martin Tourneboeuf
• Valerian Comiti

License

YaCo is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 that can be found in the LICENSE file