Thread by @cyb_detective

XARGS 🧵

When I post a link to a #osint #cli tools, people ask me: "Why bother with the command line when you can do the same thing with online tools?"

№1 reason is the ability to automate the research of a LIST of domains, emails, phone numbers or other objects.

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This can be done using the XARGS utility, which is installed by default on Linux/MacOS (and can be installed on Windows).

I will show you how to use it using the BlackBird tool, which searches for profiles in 113 social networks by nickname.

github.com/p1ngul1n0/blac…

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1. Create file nicknames.txt and put some nicknames in it.

2. Run command:

cat nicknames.txt | xargs -L1 python3 blackbird․py -u

3. Wait for the script to finish and make sure the results folder contains the json files for each nickname.

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Detailed explanation of what we typed into the command line can be found on the explainshell.com (view pic)
Briefly:
1. Read the nicknames.txt file
2. Take from it one line at a time (L1) and use them as an argument to run BlackBird with the -u (username) parameter

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You can save the line

cat nicknames.txt | xargs -L1 python3 blackbird․py -u

into the blackbird․sh file and then run it many times with the command:

bash blackbird․sh

(replacing the information in the nicknames.txt file beforehand)

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Yes, many scripts for #osint support input as a txt file.

But the above method is universal for all scripts that run with arguments. And not only for Python, but also for Shell scripts, Perl, Node.js, Java etc.

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