Crate augur

augur - Tool to extract strings and related pseudo-code Copyright (c) 2024-2025 Marco Ivaldi raptor@0xdeadbeef.info

“In fact I’ve actually triggered buffer overflows by just entering my real name.”

– A.

Augur is a blazing fast IDA Pro headless plugin that extracts strings and related pseudo-code from a binary file. It stores pseudo-code of functions that reference strings in an organized directory tree.

Features

• Blazing fast, headless user experience courtesy of IDA Pro 9 and Binarly’s idalib Rust bindings.
• Support for binary targets for any architecture implemented by IDA Pro’s Hex-Rays decompiler.
• Decompilation feature based on the decompile_to_file API exported by haruspex.
• Pseudo-code of each function that references a specific string is stored in a separate directory.

Blog post

• https://security.humanativaspa.it/streamlining-vulnerability-research-with-ida-pro-and-rust

See also

• https://github.com/0xdea/rhabdomancer
• https://github.com/0xdea/haruspex
• https://docs.hex-rays.com/release-notes/9_0#headless-processing-with-idalib
• https://github.com/binarly-io/idalib

Installing

The easiest way to get the latest release is via crates.io:

1. Download, install, and configure IDA Pro (see https://hex-rays.com/ida-pro).
2. Download and extract the IDA SDK (see https://docs.hex-rays.com/developer-guide).
3. Install LLVM/Clang (see https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-bindgen/requirements.html).
4. On Linux/macOS, install as follows:

   export IDASDKDIR=/path/to/idasdk
   export IDADIR=/path/to/ida # if not set, the build script will check common locations
   cargo install augur

   On Windows, instead, use the following commands:

   $env:LIBCLANG_PATH="\path\to\clang+llvm\bin"
   $env:PATH="\path\to\ida;$env:PATH"
   $env:IDASDKDIR="\path\to\idasdk"
   $env:IDADIR="\path\to\ida" # if not set, the build script will check common locations
   cargo install augur

Compiling

Alternatively, you can build from source:

1. Download, install, and configure IDA Pro (see https://hex-rays.com/ida-pro).
2. Download and extract the IDA SDK (see https://docs.hex-rays.com/developer-guide).
3. Install LLVM/Clang (see https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-bindgen/requirements.html).
4. On Linux/macOS, compile as follows:

   git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/0xdea/augur
   cd augur
   export IDASDKDIR=/path/to/idasdk # or edit .cargo/config.toml
   export IDADIR=/path/to/ida # if not set, the build script will check common locations
   cargo build --release

   On Windows, instead, use the following commands:

   git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/0xdea/augur
   cd augur
   $env:LIBCLANG_PATH="\path\to\clang+llvm\bin"
   $env:PATH="\path\to\ida;$env:PATH"
   $env:IDASDKDIR="\path\to\idasdk"
   $env:IDADIR="\path\to\ida" # if not set, the build script will check common locations
   cargo build --release

Usage

1. Make sure IDA Pro is properly configured with a valid license.
2. Run as follows:

   augur <binary_file>

3. Find the extracted pseudo-code of each decompiled function in the binary_file.str directory, organized by string:

   vim <binary_file>.str
   code <binary_file>.str

Compatibility

• IDA Pro 9.0.241217 - Latest compatible: v0.2.3.
• IDA Pro 9.1.250226 - Latest compatible: current version.

Note: only the unix target family is currently supported, check idalib documentation if you’re interested in a windows port.

Changelog

• https://github.com/0xdea/augur/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

TODO

• Integrate with oneiromancer.
• Allow users to choose to process string cross-references even if decompiler is unavailable.
• Implement functionality similar to https://github.com/joxeankoret/idamagicstrings.

Functions

run

Extract strings and pseudo-code of each function that references them from the binary at filepath and save them in filepath.str.