We start with a demonstration of the Spiderfoot web user interface.
To get started quickly with Spiderfoot,
we will use Kali Linux. Spiderfoot needs to be started from the command
line, so we'll execute this command to get it started.
We'll configure a Spiderfoot scan and then launch it. While
the scan is running, we'll check its status.
We will round out this demo with a quick look at the settings.
So let's get started. Here we are in a default installation of Kali Linux. A
version of Spiderfoot is already installed in Kali, so we'll use it. In the
Kali menu, there's a group of applications for information gathering, and at
the bottom of that list is Spiderfoot.
Like most of the command line tools started from the Kali menu, we
get a new terminal with the help documentation listed. In this case,
Spiderfoot has a web‑based interface, but we have to start it using
the command line by default.
This command will start Spiderfoot, and its internal web server will listen,
that's the ‑l, on the system's loopback address on port
5001. As scans are running and we access the web UI, this
terminal will have lots of log data.
We don't need to see all of that right now, so let's run this in the
background and minimize the terminal window. Now we will open a
browser and go to the Spiderfoot web interface.
The URL includes the loopback or localhost address of 127.0.0.1:5001.
Here's the starting point in Spiderfoot, the Scans page. As
this is our first time using Spiderfoot, there are no scans
here yet, so let's start one.
The New Scan page has a very simple interface to configure
reconnaissance scanning based on our needs.
For now, let's start with a simple email address that we have.
The first input box needs a name for the scan.
We'll call it First Scan.
We'll talk more about seed targets later. For now, we'll use
this example email address as our target.
We want to just focus on getting quick results, so
we'll make this a Passive scan.
We start the scan with the Run Scan button, and it
drops into the First Scan results page.
This page will refresh with data as it's collected.
Since scanning can take a while, we'll check back in a bit.
Let's take a quick look at the Spiderfoot Settings. Here we find all of the
configuration for Spiderfoot in its modules. Selecting items on the left
side will take it to that specific configuration.
We can enter the changes needed and save them with this button.
Let's go back real quick and check on our first scan.
It looks like it has not completed yet, so let's go back to Settings. Notice
that some of the modules have names that are associated with some specific
online services like AbuseIPDB or AlienVault OTX. Here we can set the
configuration of that individual module,
which will be applied to any scan executed after we save. In a later
demonstration, we'll explore Settings a little more.
Let's check again on our running scan.
It's now completed. In the next demonstration,
we'll take a look at those results.