HexDig

🔍 HexDig is a fast, extensible tool for scanning, inspecting, and extracting embedded data from binary files and firmware images.

Inspired by tools like binwalk, HexDig focuses on modern workflows, clear output, and hackable internals—making it ideal for reverse engineers, firmware analysts, and security researchers.

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✨ Features

• 🧠 Scan binary files for embedded file signatures

• 🧩 Identify compressed data, file systems, and common firmware formats

• 📦 Extract discovered data automatically or selectively

• 🧪 Analyze raw binaries and hex-level structures

• ⚡ Fast scanning with minimal dependencies

• 🔌 Plugin-friendly architecture (WIP)

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🚀 Installation

Pre-built releases (easiest)

Pre-built binaries for the latest version are attached to the GitHub releases page:

• 🐧 Debian / Ubuntu — hexdig_<version>_amd64.deb

  sudo dpkg -i hexdig_*_amd64.deb
  
  sudo apt-get install -f   # only if needed
  

• 🪟 Windows — decompress hexdig_<version>_win_x64_portable.zip, and start using it by running hexdig.exea standalone static binary. 7Zip executable and DLL are provided for extraction functionalities

Quick install (Linux, build from source)

For other Linux distributions, the install.sh script detects your distribution, installs the build dependencies, then builds and installs HexDig with CMake. Supported families: Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora/RHEL, Arch, openSUSE, Alpine.

git clone https://github.com/gcarmix/hexdig.git

cd hexdig

./install.sh

Useful flags:

• -y, --yes — non-interactive (don't prompt before installing packages)
• --no-install — only build the binary, don't run cmake --install
• --prefix=/path — set a custom CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
• --uninstall — remove a previously installed copy
• -h, --help — show usage

Build from source manually

Build dependencies: a C++17 compiler, CMake (>= 3.12), pkg-config, and the development headers for zlib, liblzma (xz) and lzo2.

git clone https://github.com/gcarmix/hexdig.git

cd hexdig

cmake -B build

cmake --build build -j

sudo cmake --install build

Other build paths

• 🪟 Windows from source (MinGW) — see docs/building-windows.md
• 📦 Build a .deb yourself — see docs/packaging-deb.md

Installation instructions may change as HexDig evolves.

Packaging support (pip, cargo, apt, etc.) is planned.

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🛠 Usage

Basic scan

hexdig firmware.bin

Scan with extraction

hexdig -e firmware.bin

Show detailed output

hexdig -v firmware.bin

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📄 Example Output

* ../inputs/openwrt-18.06.3-mediatek-mt7623-7623n-bananapi-bpi-r2-initramfs-kernel.bin
└── [0x0000] UIMAGE (length=4259578)
    Source: ../inputs/openwrt-18.06.3-mediatek-mt7623-7623n-bananapi-bpi-r2-initramfs-kernel.bin  
    Info: UImage: ARM OpenWrt Linux-4.14.128, timestamp=2019-06-21
          12:17:25 UTC, OS=Linux, CPU=ARM, Type=Kernel,
          Compression=None
    ├── [0x3c38] XZ (length=4220724)
    │   Source: extractions/openwrt-18.06.3-mediatek-mt7623-7623n-bananapi-bpi-r2-initramfs-kernel.bin.extracted/0/ARM OpenWrt Linux-4.14.128.bin
    │   Info: XZ compressed stream, total size: 4220724 bytes
    └── [0x40a3ac] DTB (length=23434)
        Source: extractions/openwrt-18.06.3-mediatek-mt7623-7623n-bananapi-bpi-r2-initramfs-kernel.bin.extracted/0/ARM OpenWrt Linux-4.14.128.bin
        Info: Device Tree Blob

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🔧 Configuration

HexDig supports configuration via:

• Command-line flags

• Environment variables (planned)

• Config file support (planned)

Run hexdig --help for all available options.

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🧩 Supported Parsers

• AES
• Android Sparse
• ARJ
• BMP
• BZIP2
• CAB
• CPIO
• CRAMFS
• CRC
• DEB
• DTB
• ELF
• FAT
• GIF
• GZIP
• JPG
• Linux
• LZMA
• MachO
• MBR
• PDF
• PE
• PNG
• RAR
• ROMFS
• 7Z
• SquashFS
• TAR
• UImage
• UBI
• XZ
• ZIP

More formats are continuously being added.

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🧪 Development Status

⚠️ HexDig is under active development.

APIs, output formats, and features may change.

Contributions, feedback, and testing are very welcome.

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are encouraged!

1. Fork the repository

2. Create a feature branch

3. Commit your changes

4. Open a pull request

Please include:

• Clear commit messages

• Tests when applicable

• Documentation updates for new features

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📜 License

HexDig is released under the GPL-3.0 License.

See the LICENSE file for details.

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🙏 Acknowledgements

• Inspired by binwalk

• Thanks to the firmware reverse-engineering and open-source security communities

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📫 Contact

Have ideas, bugs, or feature requests?

Open an issue or start a discussion on GitHub.

Happy digging 🧑‍💻