cURL For OSINT – Unlocking The Power Of Command Line Tools For Intelligence Gathering

cURL is a command line tool created in 1998 by Daniel Stenberg, a Swedish Developper/Programmer.
Daniel Stenberg’s website. The latest version of the Tool and the code is open source.

What Exactly Does cURL dD?

I am not a cURL expert and it’s quite difficult giving an exact explanation so I will try and give the most basic explanation.

cURL means Client URL and you already know from above that it’s a command line tool, so it’s basically a tool that permits/enables data transfer over many network protocols (HTTPS, HTTP, FTP, it also supports SSL Certificates).

The tool communicates with a web server with a URL and tells the server the data to be sent or received. (yes you read that correctly, the tool can do both)

Difficulty

cURL is fairly easy to use, and if you have never opened your Terminal before, now is the time to do so.

Installation

I simply installed cURL with Homebrew
Install Command: $ brew install curl

Once you have installed cURL, you can also install Grep: (more info on grep later on)
Install Command: $ brew install grep

Commands

Now that you have everything installed, we are good to go, so let’s have a look at some commands for OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence).

IP Address Information

Finding Your Own IP

Commands for finding the IP address of the device you are on: (type each command separately, each command does the same thing)

$ curl api.ipify.org

$ curl ipinfo.io/ip

$ curl ifconfig.me

Commands to get your IPV4 and IPV6 addresses:

$ curl -4 icanhazip.com

$ curl -6 icanhazip.com

For more information click here.