---
title: "About"
description: "Learn how LIEF became a cross-platform executable-format toolkit, meet its maintainers, and explore the open-source project's milestones."
canonical_url: "https://lief.re/about/"
markdown_url: "https://lief.re/about/index.md"
authors: ["Romain Thomas"]
date_modified: "2026-08-02T11:53:40+02:00"
language: "en-US"
section: "about"
tags: []
categories: []
---

# About

> Learn how LIEF became a cross-platform executable-format toolkit, meet its maintainers, and explore the open-source project's milestones.

LIEF is a cross-platform library that turns executable formats into a structured, scriptable model. It helps security researchers, tool builders, and platform engineers focus on their work instead of format plumbing.

## Project facts

- More than ten years of continuous development
- More than 1,000,000 installs every month
- Four language APIs: C++, Python, Rust, and C
- Apache-2.0 license
- Maintainer: Romain Thomas

## Project history

- 2017 — First public release: LIEF became open source with initial ELF, PE, and Mach-O parsing and modification support.
- 2019 — Builders mature: format-aware rewriting expanded with stronger Mach-O modifications and builder APIs.
- 2021 — Security metadata: PE Authenticode parsing and verification brought signatures into the unified object model.
- 2022 — ELF rewriting at scale: a redesigned ELF builder improved performance, memory behavior, and control over generated binaries.
- 2024 — Rust and debug formats: Rust bindings evolved while DWARF and PDB support opened new analysis and tooling workflows.
- 2026 — LIEF 1.0: a milestone focused on stability, usability, security, and a new cross-platform Runtime API.

## Community

- Contribute on GitHub: https://github.com/lief-project/LIEF
- Join the Discord server: https://discord.gg/jGQtyAYChJ
- Sponsor LIEF: https://github.com/sponsors/lief-project/
- Contact the maintainers: contact@lief.re
- How LIEF works: https://lief.re/doc/latest/intro.html