20 essential open-source cybersecurity tools that save you time

Open-source software’s adaptive nature ensures its durability, relevance, and compatibility with new technologies.

When I started digging deeper into the open-source cybersecurity ecosystem, I discovered an engaged community of developers working to find practical solutions to many problems, one of them being saving time.

Here are 20 essential open-source cybersecurity tools that are freely available and waiting for you to include them in your arsenal.

Adalanche

Adalanche provides immediate insights into the permissions of users and groups within an Active Directory. It’s an effective open-source tool for visualizing and investigating potential account, machine, or domain takeovers. Additionally, it helps identify and display any misconfigurations.

AuthLogParser

AuthLogParser is an open-source tool tailored for digital forensics and incident response, specifically crafted to analyze Linux authentication logs (auth.log). The tool examines the auth.log file, extracting crucial details like SSH logins, user creations, event names, IP addresses, among others.

BobTheSmuggler

BobTheSmuggler is an open-source tool designed to easily compress, encrypt, and securely transport your payload. It basically enables you to hide a payload in plain sight. BobTheSmuggler is helpful in phishing campaign assessments, data exfiltration exercises, and assumed breach scenarios.

CloudGrappler

CloudGrappler is an open-source tool designed to assist security teams in identifying threat actors within their AWS and Azure environments. It offers enhanced detection capabilities based on modern cloud threat actors’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) like LUCR-3 (Scattered Spider).

CVEMap

CVEMap is an open-source command-line interface (CLI) tool that allows you to explore Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). It’s designed to offer a streamlined and user-friendly interface for navigating vulnerability databases.

CVE Prioritizer

CVE Prioritizer is an open-source tool designed to assist in prioritizing the patching of vulnerabilities. It integrates data from CVSS, EPSS, and CISA’s KEV catalog to offer insights into the probability of exploitation and the potential effects of vulnerabilities on your systems.

DriveFS Sleuth

DriveFS Sleuth automates the investigation of Google Drive File Stream disk artifacts. The tool can parse the disk artifacts and build a filesystem tree-like structure enumerating the synchronized files and their respective properties.

EMBA

The EMBA open-source security analyzer is tailored as the central firmware analysis tool for penetration testers and product security groups. It assists throughout the security evaluation procedure, extracting firmware, conducting static and dynamic analysis through emulation, and creating a web-based report.

Faction

Faction is an open-source solution that enables pentesting report generation and assessment collaboration. It’s designed to be flexible and extended to fit seamlessly in any environment. It is easy for internal teams to build and support their small modules versus a large code base.

Lynis

Lynis is a comprehensive open-source security auditing tool for UNIX-based systems, including Linux, macOS, and BSD. Its main objective is to evaluate security measures and recommend enhancing system hardening. The tool also checks for general system details, identifies vulnerable software packages, and detects potential configuration problems.

Mobile Security Framework (MobSF)

MobSF is an open-source research platform for mobile application security, encompassing Android, iOS, and Windows Mobile. MobSF can be used for mobile app security assessment, penetration testing, malware analysis, and privacy evaluation.

Prowler

Prowler is an open-source security tool designed to assess, audit, and enhance the security of AWS, GCP, and Azure. It’s also equipped for incident response, continuous monitoring, hardening, and forensics preparation.

Quicmap

Quicmap is a fast, open-source QUIC service scanner that streamlines the process by eliminating multiple tool requirements. It effectively identifies QUIC services, the protocol version, and the supported ALPNs.

RiskInDroid

RiskInDroid (Risk Index for Android) is an open-source tool for quantitative risk analysis of Android applications based on machine learning techniques. It carries out reverse engineering on the apps to retrieve the bytecode and then infers (through static analysis) which permissions are used, extracting four sets of permissions for every analyzed app.

SiCat

SiCat is an open-source tool for exploit research designed to source and compile information about exploits from open channels and internal databases. Its primary aim is to assist in cybersecurity, enabling users to search the internet for potential vulnerabilities and corresponding exploits.

SOAPHound

SOAPHound is an open-source data collection tool capable of enumerating Active Directory environments through the Active Directory Web Services (ADWS) protocol. SOAPHound is a substitute for various open-source security tools typically employed for extracting data from Active Directory via the LDAP protocol. It achieves the same data extraction without directly interfacing with the LDAP server.

Subdominator

Subdominator is a dependable and fast open-source command-line interface tool to identify subdomain takeovers. It boasts superior accuracy and reliability, offering improvements compared to other tools.

TruffleHog

TruffleHog is an open-source scanner that identifies and addresses exposed secrets throughout your entire technology stack. Besides scanning normal files, TruffleHog decodes dozens of encodings, including base64, zip files, docx files, and many more, and scans them for secrets.

Web Check

Web Check offers thorough open-source intelligence and enables users to understand a website’s infrastructure and security posture, equipping them with the knowledge to understand, optimize, and secure their online presence.

WebCopilot

WebCopilot is an open-source automation tool that enumerates a target’s subdomains and discovers bugs using various free tools. It simplifies the application security workflow and reduces reliance on manual scripting.

Must read: 15 open-source cybersecurity tools you’ll wish you’d known earlier