Compile From Source

You'll want to compile from a MacOS or Linux machine, compiling from native Windows in theory is possible, but none of the asset scripts are designed to run on Windows, you can cross-compile the Windows server/client binaries from a better operating system like Linux or MacOS. If you only have a Windows machine see "Windows Builds" below (TL;DR use WSL).

Compile From Source (No Docker)

From scratch without Docker, requirements for compiling:

• Go v1.18 or later, though we recommend Go v1.20
• make, sed, tar, curl, zip, cut commands; most of these are installed by default but you may need to install make, curl, and zip depending on your distribution. On MacOS you may need to install XCode and accompanying cli tools.

IMPORTANT: The Sliver Makefile requires version information from the git repository, so you must git clone the repository. Using GitHub's "download zip" feature may omit the .git directory and result in broken builds.

Compiling

First git clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/BishopFox/sliver.git
$ cd sliver
$ git checkout tags/v1.5.39

Sliver embeds its own copy of the Go compiler and a few internal tools, the first time your run make a bash script will run to download these assets to your local system. This means the first build will take much longer than subsequent builds, especially if your internet connection is slow.

By default make will build whatever platform you're currently running on:

$ make

This will create sliver-server and sliver-client binaries.

Cross-compile to Specific Platforms

You can also specify a target platform for the make file, though you may need cross-compilers (see below):

$ make macos
$ make macos-arm64
$ make linux
$ make linux-arm64
$ make windows

Docker Build

The Docker builds are mostly designed for running unit tests, but can be useful if you want a "just do everything" build, you just need to have Docker installed on the machine. First git clone the Sliver repo, then run the build.py script (the script isn't required but has a few short cuts see ./build.py --help). Alternatively, execute the following command:

docker build -t sliver .

The Docker build includes mingw and Metasploit, so it can take a while to build from scratch but Docker should cache the layers effectively. Sliver will also run it's unit tests as part of the build, and that takes a few minutes too.

Windows Builds

NOTE: Starting with v1.1.0 in order to cross-compile Windows builds you'll need mingw on your system:

• Kali/Ubuntu/Debian sudo apt install mingw-w64
• MacOS brew install mingw-w64

If all you have is a Windows machine, the easiest way to build Sliver is using WSL and following the Linux/cross-compile instructions above. To cross-compile a native Windows binary use make windows and copy it to your Windows file system (i.e. /mnt/c/Users/foo/Desktop) and run it using a terminal that supports ANSI sequences such as the Windows Terminal.

Developers

If you want to modify any of the .proto files you'll need to setup a few additional tools to regenerate the .pb.go files.

• Protoc v3.19.4 or later
• Protoc-gen-go v1.27.1
• Protoc-gen-go-grpc v1.2.0

protoc

First install your platform's version of protoc v3.19.4 or later:

https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/latest

Ensure that correct protoc version is on your $PATH, you can check with a simple protoc --version

protoc-gen-go protoc-gen-go-grpc

Assuming $GOPATH/bin is on your $PATH simply run the following commands to install the appropriate versions of protoc-gen-go and protoc-gen-go-grpc:

go install google.golang.org/protobuf/cmd/[email protected]
go install google.golang.org/grpc/cmd/[email protected]

Ensure that these are both on your $PATH after running the commands, if not you probably need to add $GOPATH/bin to your $PATH. To regenerate the Protobuf and gRPC files run:

$ make pb