Wholeaked is a file-sharing tool that allows you to find the responsible person in case of a leakage. It’s written in Go.

How?

wholeaked gets the file that will be shared and a list of recipients. It creates a unique signature for each recipient and adds it to the file secretly. After then, it can automatically send files to the corresponding recipients by using Sendgrid, AWS SES or SMTP integrations. Instead of sending them by e-mail, you can also share them manually.

wholeaked works with every file type. However, it has additional features for common file types such as PDF, DOCX, MOV etc.

Sharing Process

+———–++———–+ / |Top Secret |
|Top Secret ||Recipient | / |.pdf |
|.pdf ||List | +———+ / | |
| || | |utkusen/ | / b@gov | |
| ||a@gov |—–>|wholeaked| /———-+ |
| ||b@gov | | | \ |Hidden |
| ||c@gov | +———+ \ |signature2 |
| || | \ +———–+
+———–++———–+ \ +———–+
\ |Top Secret |
\ |.pdf |
c@gov \ | |
\ | |
\ | |
\ |Hidden |
-|signature3 |
+———–+

Validation Part

To find who leaked the document, you just need to provide the leaked file to wholeaked, and it will reveal the responsible person by comparing the signatures in the database.

+———–+ +———+
|Top Secret | |Signature|
|.pdf | +———+|Database |
| | |utkusen/ || | Document leaked by
| |->|wholeaked|| |——–+
| | | || | b@gov
|Hidden | +———+| |
|Signature2 | | |
+———–+ +———+

File Types and Detection Modes

wholeaked can add the unique signature to different sections of a file. Available detection modes are given below:

File Hash: SHA256 hash of the file. All file types are supported.

Binary: The signature is directly added to the binary. Almost all file types are supported.

Metadata: The signature is added to a metadata section of a file. Supported file types: PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, MOV, JPG, PNG, GIF, EPS, AI, PSD

Watermark: An invisible signature is inserted into the text. Only PDF files are supported.

Installation

From Binary

You can download the pre-built binaries from the releases page and run. For example:

unzip wholeaked_0.1.0_macOS_amd64.zip

./wholeaked --help

From Source

• Install Go on your system
• Run: go install github.com/utkusen/wholeaked@latest

Installing Dependencies

wholeaked requires exiftool for adding signatures to metadata section of files. If you don’t want to use this feature, you don’t need to install it.

1. Debian-based Linux: Run apt install exiftool
2. macOS: Run brew install exiftool
3. Windows: Download exiftool from here https://exiftool.org/ and put the exiftool.exe in the same directory with wholeaked.

wholeaked requires pdftotext for verifying watermarks inside PDF files. If you don’t want to use this feature, you don’t need to install it.

1. Download “Xpdf command line tools” for Linux, macOS or Windows from here: https://www.xpdfreader.com/download.html
2. Extract the archive and navigate to bin64 folder.
3. Copy the pdftotext (or pdftotext.exe) executable to the same folder with wholeaked
4. For Debian Based Linux: Run apt install libfontconfig command.

Usage

Basic Usage

wholeaked requires a project name -n, the path of the base file which the signatures will add -f and a list of target recipients -t

Example command: ./wholeaked -n test_project -f secret.pdf -t targets.txt

The targets.txt file should contain name and the e-mail address in the following format:

Utku Sen,utku@utkusen.com
Bill Gates,bill@microsoft.com

After execution is completed, the following unique files will be generated:

test_project/files/Utku_Sen/secret.pdf
test_project/files/Bill_Gates/secret.pdf

By default, wholeaked adds signatures to all available places that are defined in the “File Types and Detection Modes” section. If you don’t want to use a method, you can define it with a false flag. For example:

./wholeaked -n test_project -f secret.pdf -t targets.txt -binary=false -metadata=false -watermark=false

Sending E-mails

In order to send e-mails, you need to fill some sections in the CONFIG file.

• If you want to send e-mails via Sendgrid, type your API key to the SENDGRID_API_KEY section.
• If you want to send e-mails via AWS SES integration, you need to install awscli on your machine and add the required AWS key to it. wholeaked will read the key by itself. But you need to fill the AWS_REGION section in the config file.
• If you want to send e-mails via a SMTP server, fill the SMTP_SERVER, SMTP_PORT, SMTP_USERNAME, SMTP_PASSWORD sections.

The other necessary fields to fill:

• EMAIL_TEMPLATE_PATH Path of the e-mail’s body. You can specify use HTML or text format.
• EMAIL_CONTENT_TYPE Can be html or text
• EMAIL_SUBJECT Subject of the e-mail
• FROM_NAME From name of the e-mail
• FROM_EMAIL From e-mail of the e-mail

To specify the sending method, you can use -sendgrid, -ses or -smtp flags. For example:

./wholeaked -n test_project -f secret.pdf -t targets.txt -sendgrid

Validating a Leaked File

You can use the -validate flag to reveal the owner of a leaked file. wholeaked will compare the signatures detected in the file and the database located in the project folder. Example:

./wholeaked -n test_project -f secret.pdf -validate

Important: You shouldn’t delete the project_folder/db.csv file if you want to use the file validation feature. If that file is deleted, wholeaked won’t be able to compare the signatures.