DRAKVUF
1.0 open-sourceThe section your link pointed to isn't on DRAKVUF's page any more, so we've brought you to the top.
DRAKVUF is a virtualization-based agentless black-box binary analysis system for in-depth execution tracing of arbitrary binaries without installing software in the VM.
drakvuf --name <guest_name> --plugin 'filetracer:linux' drakvuf --name <guest_name> --plugin 'exploitmon' drakvuf --name <guest_name> --plugin 'procdump2'
Summary
DRAKVUF is an open-source, agentless binary analysis system that traces the execution of arbitrary binaries, including whole operating systems, inside a virtual machine without installing anything in the guest. It runs on Intel hardware with VT-x and Extended Page Tables, monitoring Windows 7 through 10 and Linux 2.6 through 6.x guests, and is built to be run as a sandboxingsandboxingRunning code inside a restricted environment that limits what it can access or change. The isolation reduces the impact of mistakes or untrusted code, depending on the sandbox's controls. backend rather than a desktop application. Its stealthy footprint suits malware analysts and reverse engineers who need to watch a sample's kernel and userspace behavior without tipping it off. The README points to the separate DRAKVUF Sandbox project for a full graphical frontend, implying DRAKVUF itself is the analysis engine underneath. First committed in 2014, it remains active, with 76 contributors and 14 commits and 11 releases in the past year.
DRAKVUF is a virtualization-based agentless black-box binary analysis system for in-depth execution tracing of arbitrary binaries without installing software in the VM.
How DRAKVUF helps
What is this sample actually doing inside the guest once it runs?
traces kernel and userspace execution path by path from outside the VM, using hardware virtualization extensions rather than an in-guest agent, so nothing runs inside that the sample could detect
Can a suspicious binary be run and watched without tipping it off?
starts execution agentlessly on Windows or Linux guests and observes it from the hypervisor level, leaving no monitoring process, driver or hook for the sample to find inside the VM
Which files did a dropper write that never touched disk before it exited?
pulls files out of guest memory before the operating system discards them, recovering artifacts that a disk-only capture would miss
What did a process touch on the filesystem during a run?
plugins tracking file access record which files a monitored process opened or modified over the course of execution
How does heap behavior change over the life of a monitored process?
a dedicated plugin traces heap allocations inside the guest as they happen, giving a timeline of allocation activity tied to the traced process
How do I get a file into a Windows guest and get code running from it without installing anything first?
inserts the file into the guest and hijacks an existing process's execution to launch it, without any in-guest helper needed beforehand
Languages
Command line
No command matches.
| option | found in | since | description |
|---|
Values are placeholders taken from each option’s declared default. Nothing is executed here — the output shown is a recording of a run that already happened.
Score card
-
Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
-
Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
-
Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
-
Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
-
Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
- Community health
-
Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
-
Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
-
Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
-
Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply
Nine scores for DRAKVUF, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.
Score cards are part of every paid plan.
See plans → Already subscribed? Sign in →Trajectory
Blank means never measured; nothing here is a filled-in zero.
Peer standings are included with Researcher and Business. See how this tool ranks against its competitors, using data we don't publish anywhere else.
See plans →Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.
How this is scored
- Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
- Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
- Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
- Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
- Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
- Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
- Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
- Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.
Release-note detail over time
See how much detail DRAKVUF puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.
Checking release-note history…
Coverage
Missing something? Tell us
What DRAKVUF connects to, runs on and detects, read from its release notes and docs. So far: 1 new supported platform.
1 change, tracked since Oct 31, 2026.
-
Oct 312026
new Windows 10 and Windows 11 64-bit support
Windows 10 & Windows 11 64-bit
Operating systems 1
Nothing first seen in this window. That doesn't mean DRAKVUF shipped nothing, only that we found no record of it.
How we count
Read from 1 of 8 release notes and docs updates we hold for DRAKVUF. "First seen" is the earliest note that names something; "last" is the latest. Our history may start partway through DRAKVUF's life, so an old integration can show a recent first-seen date.
Each change counts once: "added 40 checks" is one line, so the numbers measure how often coverage moves, not how big the catalogue is or how well it detects.
Releases
8 entries
No entries match these filters.
- October 20261
- December 20221
- December 20211
- July 20201
- October 20191
- June 20171
- August 20161
- March 20161
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in tklengyel/drakvuf, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 6 −1 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 2 +1 joined · −4 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 1 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed 83% of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close 4.8 days first maintainer reply 0.2 hours
- Open backlog 114 of 495 issues ever filed
- Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
- Open backlog 114
- Contributors / month 1
- Commits / month 1
- Stars 1,275
- bugs 17%
- other 83%
Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this
Libraries its release ships
What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.
Add the badge to your README
Maintain this project? The badge links readers straight to this page, so they can follow every release here.