List of Tools

Throughout our past, present, and future posts, we will be discussing, analyzing, and explaining tools to use in our daily ethical hacking.

This is a list that we will continue to expand over time…

INFORMATION GATHERING, ON LINE AND LOCAL TOOLS

• ON LINE TOOLS
  • DOMAIN INFORMATION
    • WHOIS
      • Whois.com
      • ICANN WHOIS
      • WHOISology
    • DNS
      • VIEW DNS INFO: Link: https://viewdns.info/
      • RECON & RESEARCH: Link https://dnsdumpster.com/
    • DOMAIN & TECHNOLOGY
      • NETCRAFT. Provides historical hosting info, IP addresses, technologies used. Link: https://sitereport.netcraft.com/
      • SSL CHECK. Link: https://www.ssllabs.com
  • SEARCH ENGINES
    • SHODAN. Search devices exposed to the internet.
      Link: https://www.shodan.io/
    • CENSYS. Focuses on certificates, hosts, and vulnerabilities. Link: https://search.censys.io
    • ZOOMEYE. Chinese alternative to Shodan, with different indexing logic. Link: https://www.zoomeye.org/
  • OSINT
    • OSINT FRAMEWORK. A categorized directory of OSINT tools and resources for recon.: Link: https://osintframework.com/
    • OSINT NAVIGATOR: Interactive mind map of OSINT tools by category. Link: https://ekky19.github.io/osint/
    • WEB CHECK: Online domain scanner showing DNS, subdomains, headers, and tech stack. Link: https://web-check.xyz/
    • INTELX. Search leaks, emails, usernames, social profiles, pastebins. Link: https://intelx.io/
• LOCAL TOOLS
  • THE HARVESTER. Collects emails, subdomains, IPs using search engines and public sources. Repository: https://github.com/laramies/theHarvester
  • RECON-NG. Modular web reconnaissance framework. Repository: https://github.com/lanmaster53/recon-ng
  • MALTEGO. Graph-based recon tool for visualizing links between identities, domains, leaks, etc. Link: https://www.maltego.com/
  • NMAP. Network mapping and service detection. Link: https://nmap.org/
  • WAPPALYZER BROWSER EXTENSION. Detect web stack, with Chrome/Firefox plugins and API. Link: https://www.wappalyzer.com/
  • FOCA. Windows-based tool that extracts metadata from documents (.pdf, .docx, .pptx). Repository: https://github.com/ElevenPaths/FOCA
  • WHATWEB. CLI tool to fingerprint web technologies. Repository: https://github.com/urbanadventurer/WhatWeb
  • SHERLOCK. Finds usernames across hundreds of social media platforms. Repository: https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock
  • EXIFTOOL. Extracts metadata from images, PDFs, Office files. Link: https://exiftool.org/
  • METAGOOFIL. Scrapes files from websites and extracts metadata. Repository: https://github.com/laramies/metagoofil

ANTIVIRUS, MALWARE, SOCIAL MEDIA & CREDENTIAL LEAKS

• VIRUS TOTAL. Scans files, URLs, and IPs with multiple antivirus engines and threat intel. Link: https://www.virustotal.com
• HAVE I BEEN PWNED. Check if an email address was part of a known data breach. Link: https://haveibeenpwned.com/
• WHATSMYNAME. Discover a username’s presence across multiple platforms. Link: https://whatsmyname.app/
• BLACKLIST CHECKER. Checks if a domain or IP is blacklisted in spam or threat databases. Link: https://blacklistchecker.com/

OTHER INTERESTING TOOLS

• WAYBACK MACHINE. Shows historical snapshots of websites, great for finding deleted content. Link: https://web.archive.org/
• GOOGLE HACKING DB. Curated dorks for finding exposed files, panels, cameras, etc. Link: https://www.exploit-db.com/google-hacking-database
• GHDB SEARCH TOOL. Automates Google dork execution via CLI. Repository: https://github.com/opsdisk/google-hacking-database

VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT

• NESSUS. Commercial scanner with broad plugin coverage. Link: https://www.tenable.com/products/nessus
• OPENVAS. Open-source vulnerability scanner. Link: https://www.greenbone.net/en/
• NUCLEI. High-speed vulnerability scanner using YAML templates. Repository: https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei
• WAPITI. Web application vulnerability scanner. Repository: https://github.com/wapiti-scanner/wapiti
• NIKTO. Web server scanner for outdated software and issues. Repository: https://github.com/sullo/nikto