Hackers are always looking for new and innovative ways to find content on the internet. Automated content discovery tools make this process a lot easier by automating the entire process and helping hackers find what they're looking for quickly and easily. In this blog post, we will discuss automated content discovery tools, wordlists, FFUF, DIRB, and Gobuster. We will also provide examples of how these tools can be used to hack into websites and steal information. Stay tuned!
What is Automated Discovery?
Automated content discovery, or ACD, is a process of finding and extracting content from websites automatically. This procedure is automated since it frequently entails hundreds, thousands, or even millions of requests to a web server. Using these requests, malicious individuals and organizations may be able to obtain information such as usernames and passwords. The end goal is to receive access to resources we didn't know existed before. Wordlists aid in the accomplishment of this objective by allowing us to check whether a file or directory exists on a website.
What are Wordlists?
Wordlists are a collection of words that can be used to find information on the internet. They can be used to find usernames, passwords, and other sensitive information. The benefit of using wordlists is that they are easy to use and can be very effective in finding the information you're looking for. This is an excellent site for wordlists, with Daniel Miessler maintaining SecLists.
Automation Tools
There are a number of different automation tools that can be used for hacking purposes. Some of these tools include FFUF, DIRB, and Gobuster.
FFUF
FFUF is an open-source web fuzzing program for finding components and content within web applications, as well as web servers. What do I mean by this? When you visit a website, you're likely to see material that the site's owner wants to offer you, such as index.php on a page like that. The difficulties in a website that must be addressed may exist outside of the security perimeter. For example, the owner of the website may have content hosted at /admin.php, that you both want to know about, and test. FFUF is a tool that may help to find those items, for your perusal.
Example using wordlists with FFUF:
user@machine$ ffuf -w /usr/share/wordlists/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/common.txt -u http:
Source: FUFF Source
DIRB
DIRB is a Web Content Scanner. It searches for existing (and/or hidden) Web Objects on the Internet. It does so by launching a dictionary-based assault against a web server and analyzing the response.
It comes with built-in preconfigured attack wordlists, but you may also use your own wordlists. DIRB can also operate as a traditional CGI scanner, but keep in mind that it is primarily a content scanner, not a vulnerability scanner.
The primary goal of this tool is to assist in professional web application auditing. It addresses areas that traditional web vulnerability scanners may miss. In particular, it searches for specific web objects that other generic CGI scanners may miss. It doesn’t search for vulnerabilities nor does it look for web content that can be vulnerable.
Example using wordlists with DIRB:
user@machine$ dirb http://IP/ /usr/share/wordlists/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/common.txt
Source: DIRB Source
Gobuster
The Go language record scanner Gobuster is worth seeking. Brute-force scanners such as DirBuster and DIRB in popular directories are capable of working gracefully, yet they may frequently be slow and responsive to mistakes. Gobuster, on the other hand, may be a Go-based variant of that software and is available in a command-line format. The major advantage of utilizing Gobuster over other directory searchers is that it is fast.
Example using wordlists with Gobuster:
user@machine$ gobuster dir --url http://IP/ -w /usr/share/wordlists/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/common.txt
Source: Gobuser Source
Conclusion
In this article, we discussed the basics of automated content discovery and some of the tools that are available to help with this process. We also took a look at how wordlists can be used to find sensitive information on the internet. Stay tuned for future articles in which we will discuss more hacking tools and techniques!
