Velociraptor is a tool for collecting host based state information using The Velociraptor Query Language (VQL) queries.

To learn more about Velociraptor, read the documentation on:

https://docs.velociraptor.app/

If you want to see what Velociraptor is all about simply:

1. Download the binary from the release page for your favorite platform (Windows/Linux/MacOS).

2. Start the GUI

  $ velociraptor gui

This will bring up the GUI, Frontend and a local client. You can collect artifacts from the client (which is just running on your own machine) as normal.

Once you are ready for a full deployment, check out the various deployment options at https://docs.velociraptor.app/docs/deployment/

We have our complete training course (7 sessions x 2 hours each) https://docs.velociraptor.app/training/

The course covers many aspects of Velociraptor in detail.

To run a Velociraptor server via Docker, follow the instructions here: https://github.com/weslambert/velociraptor-docker

Velociraptor is also useful as a local triage tool. You can create a self contained local collector using the GUI:

1. Start the GUI as above (velociraptor gui).

2. Select the Server Artifacts sidebar menu, then Build Collector.

3. Select and configure the artifacts you want to collect, then select the Uploaded Files tab and download your customized collector.

To build from source, make sure you have:

• a recent Golang installed from https://golang.org/dl/ (Currently at least Go 1.23.2)
  • the go binary is in your path.
  • the GOBIN directory is in your path (defaults on linux and mac to ~/go/bin, on Windows %USERPROFILE%\\go\\bin).
• gcc in your path for CGO usage (on Windows, TDM-GCC has been verified to work)
• make
• Node.js LTS (the GUI is build using Node v18.14.2)

    $ git clone https://github.com/Velocidex/velociraptor.git
    $ cd velociraptor

    # This will build the GUI elements. You will need to have node
    # installed first. For example get it from
    # https://nodejs.org/en/download/.
    $ cd gui/velociraptor/
    $ npm install

    # This will build the webpack bundle
    $ make build

    # To build a dev binary just run make.
    # NOTE: Make sure ~/go/bin is on your path -
    # this is required to find the Golang tools we need.
    $ cd ../..
    $ make

    # To build production binaries
    $ make linux
    $ make windows

In order to build Windows binaries on Linux you need the mingw tools. On Ubuntu this is simply:

$ sudo apt-get install mingw-w64-x86-64-dev gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64 gcc-mingw-w64

We have a pretty frequent release schedule but if you see a new feature submitted that you are really interested in, we would love to have more testing prior to the official release.

We have a CI pipeline managed by GitHub actions. You can see the pipeline by clicking the actions tab on our GitHub project. There are two workflows:

1. Windows Test: this workflow builds a minimal version of the Velociraptor binary (without the GUI) and runs all the tests on it. We also test various windows support functions in this pipeline. This pipeline builds on every push in each PR.

2. Linux Build All Arches: This pipeline builds complete binaries for many supported architectures. It only runs when the PR is merged into the master branch. To download the latest binaries simply select the latest run of this pipeline, scroll down the page to the "Artifacts" section and download the Binaries.zip file (Note you need to be logged into GitHub to see this).

If you fork the project on GitHub, the pipelines will run on your own fork as well as long as you enable GitHub Actions on your fork. If you need to prepare a PR for a new feature or modify an existing feature you can use this to build your own binaries for testing on all architectures before send us the PR.

Velociraptor is written in Golang and so is available for all the platforms supported by Go. This means that Windows XP and Windows server 2003 are not supported but anything after Windows 7/Vista is.

We build our releases using the MUSL library (x64) for Linux and a recent MacOS system, so earlier platforms may not be supported by our release pipeline. We also distribute 32 bit binaries for Windows but not for Linux. If you need 32 bit Linux builds you will need to build from source. You can do this easily by forking the project on GitHub, enabling GitHub Actions in your fork and editing the Linux Build All Arches pipeline.

Velociraptor's power comes from VQL Artifacts, that define many capabilities to collect many types of data from endpoints. Velociraptor comes with many built in Artifacts for the most common use cases. The community also maintains a large number of additional artifacts through the Artifact Exchange.

If you need help performing a task such as deployment, VQL queries etc. Your first port of call should be the Velociraptor Knowledge Base at https://docs.velociraptor.app/knowledge_base/ where you will find helpful tips and hints.

Questions and feedback are welcome at velociraptor-discuss@googlegroups.com (or https://groups.google.com/g/velociraptor-discuss)

You can also chat with us directly on discord https://docs.velociraptor.app/discord

File issues on https://github.com/Velocidex/velociraptor

Read more about Velociraptor on our blog: https://docs.velociraptor.app/blog/

Hang out on Medium https://medium.com/velociraptor-ir

Follow us on Twitter @velocidex