I have previously written on open source. Here is the link to that article, for more understanding. Today, I want to talk about open source tools. In this article I will discuss 10 open source tools that hackers and security researchers use to gather intelligence,before the real assessment or hacking is done.
First, what are open source intelligence tools?
These are tools used by hackers or security researchers to gather intelligence about a particular technology asset or assets in the scope of their engagement.
Here are 10 open source tools that you can use:
- Nmap: This is a penetration testing utility for network discovery and security auditing with NSE scripts that can detect vulnerabilities, misconfiguration and security related information around network services
Web: http://nmap.org
- OSINT Framework: The OSINT framework provides a set of Open source Intelligence tools, classified into numerous classes, that pentesters, hackers and security researchers can use for intelligence operation (data gathering).. The OSINT framework is a web-based interface and is primarily centered on listing free resources.
Web: https://osintframework.com/
- HaveIbeenPwned: This is a free resource for anyone to quickly assess if they may have been put at risk due to an online account of theirs having been compromised or “pwned” in a data breach.
Web: https://haveibeenpwned.com/
- Censys: Censys is a search engine that allows computer scientists to ask questions about the devices and networks that compose the Internet. Driven by Internet-wide scanning, Censys lets researchers find specific hosts and create aggregate reports on how devices, websites, and certificates are configured and deployed.
Web: https://censys.io/
- Builtwith: BuiltWith is a website profiler, lead generation, competitive analysis and business intelligence tool providing technology adoption, ecommerce data and usage analytics for the internet.
- OpenVas: The Open Vulnerability Assessment System, known more commonly as OpenVAS, is a myriad of tools that work together to scan technology assets using a publicly available database of known exploits and weaknesses.
- Maltego: Maltego is a comprehensive tool for graphical link analyses that offers real-time data mining and information gathering, as well as the representation of this information on a node-based graph, making patterns and multiple order connections between information easily identifiable.
- Shodan: This is a search engine that hackers and security researchers use to scan the internet for technology assets such as servers, CCTV, routers.The intelligence gathered here enables effective decision making.
- Spiderfoot: SpiderFoot is a reconnaissance tool used by hackers and security researchers.It automatically queries over 100 public data sources (OSINT) to gather intelligence on IP addresses, domain names, e-mail addresses, names and more.
Web: https://www.spiderfoot.net/
- theHarvester: This tool can be used by penetration testers and security researchers to gather intelligence on emails, sub-domains, hosts, employee names, open ports and banners from different publicly available sources like search engines and SHODAN computer database.
Web:https://github.com/laramies/theHarvester
There it is for this article, more OSINT tools will be discussed in the coming weeks, and hopefully, we will take a deep dive into these tools touching on the technical use case.
