IPyIDA is a python-only solution to add an IPython console to IDA Pro. Use
<Shift-.> to open a window with an embedded Qt console. You can then
benefit from IPython’s autocompletion, online help, monospaced font input
field, graphs, and so on.
You can also connect to the kernel outside of IDA using ipython console
--existing.
IPyIDA should be compatible with IDA 6.6 and later on Windows, OS X and Linux. It has been tested on IDA up to 9.0.
A script is provided to install IPyIDA and its dependencies automagically from the IDA console. Simply copy the following line to the IDA console.
import urllib2; exec urllib2.urlopen('https://github.com/eset/ipyida/raw/stable/install_from_ida.py').read()import urllib.request; exec(urllib.request.urlopen('https://github.com/eset/ipyida/raw/stable/install_from_ida.py').read())On macOS, Python3.framework does not provide a trusted CA file. You can use
the system-wide file /etc/ssl/cert.pem.
import urllib.request; exec(urllib.request.urlopen('https://github.com/eset/ipyida/raw/stable/install_from_ida.py', cafile="/etc/ssl/cert.pem").read())The script will do the following:
-
Install
pipif it’s not already installed -
Install the
ipyidapackage from PyPi -
Copy
ipyida_plugin_stub.pyto the user’spluginsdirectory -
Load the IPyIDA plugin
You can inspect the install_from_ida.py script if you wish to see exactly what it does.
If you’d rather manage the dependencies and updates yourself, you can
copy ipyida_plugin_stub.py and the ipyida directory inside IDA’s
plugins directory.
This method requires that you manage dependencies on your own. IPyIDA requires
the ipykernel and qtconsole package, and the qasync package if using
ipykernel version 5 or newer.
IPyIDA includes a magic command, %open_notebook, to open a browser with a
notebook attached to IPyIDA. The command takes care of installing dependencies
on its first run and starting a Notebook server unless one is already running.
Check the command help (by typing %open_notebook?) for further options.
By default, the console does not have any globals available. If you want to
have module imported before the console is opened, IPyIDA will read the
ipyidarc.py file from the IDA user directory (idaapi.get_user_idadir()).
Anything you import in this file will be available in the IPython console.
This is similar to the idapythonrc.py file.
With a dark theme in IDA Pro, it’s more convenient to also have a dark theme in
the IPython console. To activate the dark theme built into qtconsole, add the
following in your ipyidarc.py:
import qtconsole.styles
import ipyida.ida_qtconsole
ipyida.ida_qtconsole.set_widget_options(dict(
style_sheet = qtconsole.styles.default_dark_style_sheet,
syntax_style = qtconsole.styles.default_dark_syntax_style
))This problem is specific to OS X’s App Nap feature in OS X 10.9 and up. When running Disabling App Nap for IDA Pro seems to fix the problem, but is a a hack for now and will use more battery on a laptop, we should find a better solution.
Here is how to disable App Nap for IDA Pro:
defaults write com.hexrays.idaq NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES
defaults write com.hexrays.idaq64 NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES@james91b also successfully integrated a IPython kernel in IDA. Being a non-Windows IDA user, I needed something cross-platform and took a Python-only approach to implement it. Although the some of the implementation idea comes from that project, IPyIDA was written from scratch. Hat tip to @james91b and all IDA_IPython contributors. IDA_IPython is available on Github at https://github.com/james91b/ida_ipython.