PE-bear

PE-bear

PE-bear is a free, open source portable executable (PE) malware analysis tool. It performs static analysis on Windows executable files to extract metadata and identify suspicious characteristics.
PE-bear image
malware analysis reverse-engineering forensics

PE-bear: Portable Executable Malware Analysis Tools

Free, open source portable executable (PE) malware analysis tool for Windows executable files with static analysis and metadata extraction

What is PE-bear?

PE-bear is a free, open source portable executable (PE) malware analysis tool for Windows. It performs static analysis on PE files to extract metadata and identify suspicious characteristics that may indicate the file is malicious.

Features of PE-bear include:

  • Extracting PE header information like imports, exports, resources, etc.
  • Identifying packing/compression
  • Listing strings and functions
  • Checking hashes against VirusTotal
  • Generating similarity scores against known malware
  • Highly customizable configuration for checks against suspicious PE properties

As a portable open source tool, PE-bear is useful for malware analysts and researchers to quickly triage Windows executable files. It generates analysis reports in multiple formats like JSON, XML, HTML, etc. for integration with other tools. As it performs static analysis, PE-bear is safe to run on unknown files and provides a first step towards identifying potentially malicious samples for further analysis.

PE-bear Features

Features

  1. Static analysis of PE files
  2. Extraction of metadata from PE headers
  3. Identification of suspicious characteristics
  4. Detection of packed/obfuscated code
  5. Display of import/export tables
  6. Extraction of resources
  7. YARA rule matching

Pricing

  • Open Source

Pros

Free and open source

Easy to use graphical interface

Portable and lightweight

Supports a variety of file formats

Can be automated via command line

Regularly updated

Cons

Limited to static analysis

Less comprehensive than commercial tools

May miss more advanced obfuscation

Lacks support for some file formats

No built-in dynamic analysis capabilities


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