IDA Subscription and Know Your Customer Policy (KYC)

What is IDA?

IDA is a binary analysis software that can disassemble, decompile to pseudocode, and debug malware. IDA is the most common disassembler when it comes to analyzing a malware. It has had a free version for a long time, and recently they also started giving away their x86 decompiler for free. This may be due to increased competition with the availability of Binary Ninja.

Does the free version require KYC?

No, Hex-Rays doesn’t require Know Your Customer for the free version. However, you will need to register with an email address to be able to download it. It wasn’t required before, but it is now

Do paid subscriptions require KYC?

Yes, you must confirm your identity for any paid version of IDA. KYC is requested after the payment is completed. You will receive an email for KYC asking for a national ID card or passport. Both the back and front of the ID should be scanned/photographed and sent through this email. Also, I don’t know if it’s because I bought the cheapest and hobby use subscription, but the responses from Hex-Rays for KYC was not very fast in my experience. Now they are still not slow, I got a response after 8 hours. However, for some reason I was expecting a response in minutes since they have the industry standard software.

You can see that they use KYC policy on their privacy policy.

Also, make sure you enter your correct information when buying the subscription as you will be going through the KYC process. The purchase form will require you to enter your first and last name for named licensing. Fun fact, I usually enter fake information when a website asks me for my first and last name. No matter how reputable a company is with how many measures in place, there is still a risk of data leakage. So maybe one of the solutions is to use fake information when registering with websites, at least when it’s not really necessary. However, as I said not necessary, IDA named license was a necessary one to enter legitimate information. So don’t make this mistake and make sure you enter the correct information.