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IDA Classroom: Installation and Licensing

IDA (Interactive Disassembler) is the industry standard tool for reverse engineering. The IDA Classroom edition is free for educational use and includes support for x86, x86-64, ARM-32, and ARM-64 disassembly, cloud-based decompilation, IDAPython, and the C++ SDK — everything you need for this course.

This page walks through obtaining your license from the Hex-Rays portal and installing IDA on your analysis machine.

Step 1: Create a My Hex-Rays Account and Download Your License

The instructor has already activated a license for you. Go to my.hex-rays.com and create a free account using your PSU email address — the license is registered to that address, so it must match exactly.

Once logged in:

  1. Click the Licenses tab.

  2. Find your active license. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the Actions column and select “Download hexlic”.

    Alternatively, open the license detail view and click the download button there.

  3. Save the resulting ida.hexlic file somewhere accessible — you will need it during installation.

Step 2: Download the IDA Installer

  1. In the My Hex-Rays portal, go to the Download Center (link in the top navigation).

  2. Download the installer for your operating system:

    OS Minimum Version Architecture
    Windows Windows 8 x64
    macOS macOS 12 (Monterey) x64 or ARM64
    Linux CentOS 7 / Ubuntu 16.04 x86_64

    Ensure that you download the latest version. As of this writing, that is 9.3sp1. Ensure that you download the “IDA Classroom” version, rather than “IDA Free”.

  3. Ensure Python 3 is installed on your system — it is required for IDAPython.

    Linux only: install the required libraries before running the installer:

    sudo apt install libx11-6 libxext6 libxrender1 libglib2.0-0

Step 3: Install IDA

Windows and macOS

  1. Double-click the installer file and follow the wizard.

  2. When the License Manager popup appears on first launch, point it to your ida.hexlic file.

    Alternatively, place ida.hexlic in either:

    • The IDA installation directory, or
    • Your home folder (C:\Users\<you>\ on Windows, ~/ on macOS/Linux)

    IDA will find the file automatically on startup.

Linux

# Make the installer executable
chmod +x idaXX_linux.run

# Run the installer
./idaXX_linux.run

# Launch IDA after installation
./ida90

Follow the wizard, then place ida.hexlic in the installation directory or your home folder.

Step 4: Verify the Installation

Launch IDA. If the license is found and valid, IDA will open to the welcome screen without any licensing errors.

To verify which license is loaded: Help → License Manager.

To check for updates: Help → Check for Updates, or visit the Download Center in the My Hex-Rays portal.

Troubleshooting

Problem Solution
No license visible on portal Confirm you are logged in with your PSU email; contact the instructor if it still does not appear
“Pending KYC” on portal Complete the identity verification step shown on the portal before activating
IDA shows “no license” on startup Confirm ida.hexlic is in the installation directory or home folder
Decompiler not available Contact the instructor — the license may need to be re-issued with different decompilers selected
Linux: IDA fails to start Install the required libraries (libx11, libxext, libxrender, libglib2.0)

Further Reading