Information Gathering: Email Address Tracking

Information Gathering: Tracking Email Addresses

Importance of Email Addresses

Email addresses are crucial for various hacking activities. For instance, they can be used in:

• Brute-force attacks: Email addresses and password fields can be targeted in brute-force attempts.

• Social engineering: Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp can be exploited using email addresses to send payloads.

The success of a hacker often relies on effective social engineering, making the ability to find target email addresses highly valuable.

Payloads can be disguised as images, photos, or applications. When a target opens these seemingly harmless files, the embedded payload grants unauthorized access to the target's device.

Tools for Tracking Email Addresses

1. The Harvester:

   • A tool used to gather information, including email addresses, from a specified domain.

   • To use the Harvester, open the terminal and type Dharvester.

   • The basic command structure is: Dharvester [options].

   • Use the -h or --help option to display available options.

   • The -d option specifies the domain to search such as, dpr.go.id.

   • The -b option specifies the source to use for searching. For instance, google or all to search all available sources.

   • The -l option sets the depth of the search. The default depth is 500 but can be adjusted.

     Dharvester -d dpr.go.id -b all -l 500
     

   • The output includes:

     • Hosts found (e.g. 105 hosts).

     • Email addresses found (e.g., ahmad.nugroho@dpr.go.id).

     • IP addresses found (e.g., 8 IP addresses).

     • URLs found (e.g., 6 URLs).

   • Inconsistency Issue: The Harvester may not consistently produce results; it might find emails for a domain in one instance but not in another.

   • Due to this inconsistency, relying on multiple tools is advisable.

2. Hunter.io:

   • A web-based tool for finding email addresses associated with a domain.

   • Access it via a web browser by navigating to hunter.io.

   • Enter the domain you want to search such as, dpr.go.id.

   • The tool provides a list of email addresses.

   • Free accounts have limitations, such as blurred email addresses and a limited number of viewable emails (e.g., 10 emails).

   • Creating a free account allows viewing up to 10 emails without blurring.

   • Paid accounts offer access to a larger number of email addresses (e.g., 926 email addresses from dpr.go.id).

   • Hunter.io provides additional information such as the name of the user and the source of the email address.

Future Steps

Future lessons will cover creating a custom tool using Python to search for emails from a domain, similar to the functionality of the Harvester.