Molly

Molly (after Molly Hooper in Sherlock Holmes, not the drug) is an automated file analysis and extraction tool. It can search files for user-defined patterns and perform various actions when a match is found.

Molly was initially developed in the SECONDS (Secure Connected Devices) project for binary extraction from foreign firmware images.

Installation

To build from source::

sudo apt install golang build-essential git
git clone https://github.com/avahidi/molly
cd molly
make && make test && make run

To build command-line tool from go::

go install github.com/avahidi/molly/cmd/mh@latest

Example

Lets run the Molly command-line utility "mh" on itself::

$ mh -o output -p config.builtin=true ./mh
SCAN RESULTS:
        * File mh (0 errors):
                => ELF ELF_le ELF_x64

It seems mh recognizes itself being an ELF binary. Lets look at the generated report::

$ ls output/
match.json  mh  mh_molly.json  rules.json  summary.json

$ cat output/summary.json
....
    "matches": { "mh": 1},
    "tags": {
            "elf": [ "mh" ],
            "executable": [ "mh"]
...

Rules

Molly uses a rule database to store known patterns. The rules have a simple and familiar syntax, for example consider the ELF rule::

rule ELF (tag = "executable,elf") {
    /* variables */
    var magic = String(0, 4);
    var class = Byte(4);
    var data = Byte(5);
    var version = Byte(6);
    /* conditions */
    if magic== "\x7FELF" && (version == 1)
        && (class == 1 || class == 2)
        && (data == 1 || data == 2);
}

Rules can have children, which alllows multiple related file formats to be defined with minimal effort. For example::

rule ELF_le (bigendian = false) : ELF {
    var machine = Short(18);
    if data == 1;
}
rule ELF_be (bigendian = true) : ELF {
    var machine = Short(18);
    if data == 2;
}
rule ELF_x86 (tag = "x86") : ELF_le {
    if machine == 0x0003;
}

Rules can also define actions to be performed when a match is found. For example::

rule ELF (tag = "executable,elf") {
    ...
    analyze("strings", "string_analysis");
    analyze("version", "");
}

The resulting report file::

$ ls output/
match.json  mh  mh_molly.json  rules.json  summary.json

$ cat output/mh_molly.json
{
    "filename": "mh",
    ...
    "strings": [
        "runtime.throw",
        "compress/zlib.NewReader",
        "bufio.NewReader",
        "c=FrX",
    ...
    "possible-version": [
        "GLIBC_2.3.2",
        "GLIBC_2.2.5",
        "go1.18.1",
        ...