emailGuesser
You 've probably heard of brute-force attacks to find a password. How about brute-force "guessing" a target's email address?
Introducing emailGuesser!
emailGuesser is an Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) tool which helps users "guess" their target's email address based on multiple inputs and preferences. Although there are already tools out there that try to guess the potential e-mail format(s) of a target, none of them tries to actually verify each guessed e-mail format it produces as output. This tool does exactly that: It will generate e-mail formats that are commonly used in an attempt to guess the target's e-mail address(es), based on the user's input. It will then continue to try and verify if the guessed e-mail address(es) actually exist(s). It will first start by searching existing Skype accounts and then move on to search for breached databases that may include each e-mail address. This way, an OSINT investigator will quickly be able to rule out some e-mail addresses found (based on details in a Skype account such as name or birth date) or focus finding details for the rest (found in breach databases).
DISCLAIMER: This tool is for research purposes only. Use this tool responsibly and ethically! I am not reliable for any abuse or harm, you may cause using it.
It is highly advisable to run the script using a VPN to enhance your privacy protection! It will also ensure your IP will not get banned due to continuous requests to the sites used (although this has never happened in any of my tests).
Installation
To install this project run:
# clone the repo
$ git clone https://github.com/WhiteHatInspector/emailGuesser
# change the working directory to emailGuesser
$ cd emailGuesser
# install requirements
python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
# run the script
$ python3 emailGuesser.pyUsage
The script will search for potential e-mail addresses of a target according to inputs given by the user. It will try "guessing" potential e-mail addresses of the target by using the most common formats used in e-mail addresses (e.g. jsmith@domain or j.smith@domain).
The script asks for the following user inputs (mandatory inputs are marked with asterisk):
Name*: Insert the first name of your target (e.g. john)
Surname*: Insert the last name of your target (e.g. smith)
Birth year: Insert birth year in its full form (e.g. 1984), otherwise (e.g. if you input 84) the script will assume you don't know the exact birth year.
You can also input "no" if you don't know the year of birth.
Username: Insert any known username of the target (only one). You can also input "no" if you don't know any username.
Add extra e-mail formats: Use static or dynamic formats for the username of the e-mail (part of e-mail before the @ symbol).
This option will add e-mail usernames to an already pre-configured list in the script (see link below for pre-configured usernames table)
If you want to add static formats just input them (e.g. josmi94) but if you want to use dynamic formats then use any structure
containing the following:
- f!! (first char of the target's first name),
- first!! (target's first name),
- l!! (first char of the target's last name) and
- last!! (target's last name).
Example: f!!+last!! --> j+smith@domain
Skype automation: The user is asked if he would like the tool to add all Skype usernames used by persons with this name in Skype. For example, if I look for John Smith, the tool will scrape and add to the pool all usernames of people called John Smith like "live:john.smith.guy" or "iamjohnsmith32" or similar. Experiment a little if you wish to understand this function more.
Add domains: Input all domains that you wish to conduct a search to, separated by a single comma (e.g. yahoo.com,gmail.com). It is adviced to input the most common or top e-mail providers used in the country your target lives/has lived.
ATTENTION! This is probably the most important input. If you omit a domain that your target uses for one of his e-mail addresses, you will not find it because the script will not search for it.
The script will check the structure of the e-mail addresses that were automatically created and will query the valid ones to:
- Skype (using the skypli.com or tools.epieos.com/skype.php site)
- Breached databases (using the haveibeenpwned.com site)
The script may ask you at some point if you want to automatically add Skype usernames using the full name of your target. The reason this is done and why this is important, can be found in my blog post here
You can find a list of preconfigured e-mail formats that the tool will search, even if not specified otherwise by the user, here.
All e-mail addresses that are found in any of these sites, will return to the user at the end of the script, containing further info.
The script also provides a "results.txt" and a "resultscsv.csv" file at the end, that is saved to the same folder as the .py file, that the user can use for any further investigation.
The script runs continuously so after each search, it will restart from the beggining asking for the next inputs.
FAQs
Q: Why do you search in Skype for email addresses?
A: Skype allows you to search an e-mail address and immediately matches that to a name/username/birthdate/country. Meaning you get an immediate way to eliminate
potential e-mail addresses that do not belong to your target. Until now I have not found other similar tools for that but I am working on it
Q: Why sometimes Skype results in multiple users, using the same e-mail address?
A: For now I can only guess Skype doesn't verify its users e-mail addresses (used for registration), therefore anyone can use whatever e-mail address to register. I will check this more and update this section.
Q: Why do you search haveIbeenPwned for breached data?
A: haveIbeenPwned is a trustworthy site containing most known breach databases. It also allows you to search indefinitely for free and I want to keep this tool
free for anyone to use without having to pay for commercial products or APIs
Q: Why are your queries slow for each e-mail address produced?
A: In order to avoid getting an IP flag for a potential DDoS attack, I am using a random waiting time between 5-8 seconds before each request in these sites.
Unfortunately, this makes the processing time higher than just a second for each query. I am working on it, to make it run faster. Will update if I figure a way to do so.
Q: Why don't you just use SMTP and MX records?
A: After some requests, the e-mail providers may ban your IP address. If you can find a workaround on that, I will be pleased if you can send me a message.
Q: I run the script but I didn't find the e-mail address of my target. Why?
A: The script checks all e-mail formats that users tend to use most often. This means that if your target doesn't use a common format for his e-mail address, you won't be able to find it this way unless you have a clue of its format (so that you can input that format yourself). Also this tool has more chances of finding the e-mail address of your target, if your target has a more unique name. The more unique name a target has, the better. For example, John Smith is a common name and your target will most probably try using other e-mail formats when registering his e-mail address, because the common formats are probably already taken, at the time of his e-mail registration.
Last but not least, you may not find the e-mail address of your target, simply because he neither posseses a Skype account nor have ever had his credentials breached/leaked.
Q: I believe you could have implemented this script in a better way. What can I do about it?
A: Please feel free to contact me or contribute yourself in this project, by checking the next sections.
Q: Do you actively maintain this tool?
A: Yes. In case this changes, I will update this readme file.
Q: This is a great tool. I want to help you make it better or make more free tools like this. What can I do?
A: If you would like to support me in sharing free content to the OSINT community, consider buying me a coffee.
Contributing
If you would like to contribute to this project, you are welcome to do so. Each and every contribution is greatly valued! Keep in mind that this tool must remain free to use for everyone, so don't use paid APIs (like Dehashed) but try finding a work around.
Right now I am working on the following TODO list:
- Find more or alternative sites to search-query that yield immediate results about the identity of the owner of an e-mail address, such as name/username etc (like Skype does)
- Find more or alternative sites/tools to search-query in order to validate e-mail addresses (not breached data)
- Find a way to query haveIbeenPwned (or similar) site faster without having to wait for 5-8 random time duration and not getting IP banned (public proxies?)
- Add more username formats that people use often before the @ symbol on e-mails and add them to the tool
- Allow users to parse a preconfigured .txt file with email formats or/and domains, so that they can automatically input the same preferences every time they run a search, without having to manually input the same things each time
- Output a results.txt and a results.csv file with useful formats for an OSINT investigator
- Automatically add to the search pool of potential e-mail addresses all usernames used by persons using the full name (input by user) in Skype, if user wants to.
- Remove preconfigured e-mail formats that are actually not often used by people in their e-mail addresses, to reduce execution time
- Reduce execution time by any means necessary (Right now it has an average run time of 8-10 seconds/e-mail address searched)
- Add new functions and a menu with different choices
- Add exclusive check for e-mail addresses of protonmail
- Fix skypli.com 500 status error adding epieos tools as alternative skype search tool
Feedback and Questions
For any feedback or questions please contact me on https://twitter.com/whinspector or [email protected]
License
MIT © 2021 emailGuesser
Created by White Hat Inspector
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