gobuster README

The project's README from github.com/OJ/gobuster. As one markdown file: README.md.

Gobuster

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💻 Introduction

A fast and flexible brute-forcing tool written in Go

Gobuster is a high-performance directory/file, DNS and virtual host brute-forcing tool written in Go. It's designed to be fast, reliable, and easy to use for security professionals and penetration testers.

✨ Features

🎯 What Can Gobuster Do?

🚀 Quick Start

# Install gobuster
go install github.com/OJ/gobuster/v3@latest

# Basic directory enumeration
gobuster dir -u https://example.com -w /path/to/wordlist.txt

# DNS subdomain enumeration
gobuster dns -do example.com -w /path/to/wordlist.txt

# Virtual host discovery
gobuster vhost -u https://example.com -w /path/to/wordlist.txt

# S3 bucket enumeration
gobuster s3 -w /path/to/bucket-names.txt

📦 Installation

go install github.com/OJ/gobuster/v3@latest

Requirements: Go 1.24 or higher

Alternative Installation Methods

Using Binary Releases

Download pre-compiled binaries from the releases page.

Using Docker

# Pull the latest image
docker pull ghcr.io/oj/gobuster:latest

# Run gobuster in Docker
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/oj/gobuster:latest dir -u https://example.com -w /usr/share/wordlists/dirb/common.txt

Building from Source

git clone https://github.com/OJ/gobuster.git
cd gobuster
go mod tidy
go build

Troubleshooting Installation

If you encounter issues:

🎯 Usage

Gobuster uses a mode-based approach. Each mode is designed for specific enumeration tasks:

gobuster [mode] [options]

Getting Help

gobuster help                   # Show general help
gobuster help [mode]            # Show help for specific mode
gobuster [mode] --help          # Alternative help syntax

📊 Available Modes

🌐 Directory Mode (dir)

Enumerate directories and files on web servers.

Basic Usage:

gobuster dir -u https://example.com -w wordlist.txt

Advanced Options:

# With file extensions
gobuster dir -u https://example.com -w wordlist.txt -x php,html,js,txt

# With custom headers and cookies
gobuster dir -u https://example.com -w wordlist.txt -H "Authorization: Bearer token" -c "session=value"

# Show response length
gobuster dir -u https://example.com -w wordlist.txt -l

# Filter by status codes
gobuster dir -u https://example.com -w wordlist.txt -s 200,301,302

🔍 DNS Mode (dns)

Discover subdomains through DNS resolution.

Basic Usage:

gobuster dns -do example.com -w wordlist.txt

Advanced Options:

# Use custom DNS server
gobuster dns -do example.com -w wordlist.txt -r 8.8.8.8:53

# Increase threads for faster scanning
gobuster dns -do example.com -w wordlist.txt -t 50

🏠 Virtual Host Mode (vhost)

Discover virtual hosts on web servers.

Basic Usage:

gobuster vhost -u https://example.com --append-domain -w wordlist.txt

☁️ S3 Mode (s3)

Enumerate Amazon S3 buckets.

Basic Usage:

gobuster s3 -w bucket-names.txt

With Debug Output:

gobuster s3 -w bucket-names.txt --debug

🖥️ TFTP Mode (tftp)

Enumerate files on tftp servers.

Basic Usage:

gobuster tftp -s 10.0.0.1 -w wordlist.txt

☁️ GCS Mode (gcs)

Enumerate Google Cloud Storage Buckets.

Basic Usage:

gobuster gcs -w bucket-names.txt

With Debug Output:

gobuster gcs -w bucket-names.txt --debug

🔧 Fuzz Mode (fuzz)

Custom fuzzing with the FUZZ keyword.

Basic Usage:

gobuster fuzz -u https://example.com?FUZZ=test -w wordlist.txt

Advanced Examples:

# Fuzz URL parameters
gobuster fuzz -u https://example.com?param=FUZZ -w wordlist.txt

# Fuzz headers
gobuster fuzz -u https://example.com -H "X-Custom-Header: FUZZ" -w wordlist.txt

# Fuzz POST data
gobuster fuzz -u https://example.com -d "username=admin&password=FUZZ" -w passwords.txt

💰 Support

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Backers

All funds that are donated to this project will be donated to charity. A full log of charity donations will be available in this repository as they are processed.

💡 Common Use Cases

Web Application Security Testing

# Comprehensive directory enumeration
gobuster dir -u https://target.com -w /usr/share/wordlists/dirbuster/directory-list-2.3-medium.txt -x php,html,js,txt,asp,aspx,jsp

# API endpoint discovery
gobuster dir -u https://api.target.com -w /usr/share/wordlists/dirb/common.txt -x json

# Admin panel discovery
gobuster dir -u https://target.com -w admin-panels.txt -s 200,301,302,403

DNS Reconnaissance

# Comprehensive subdomain enumeration
gobuster dns -do target.com -w /usr/share/wordlists/dnsrecon/subdomains-top1mil-5000.txt -t 50

Cloud Storage Assessment

# S3 bucket enumeration with patterns
gobuster s3 -w company-names.txt -v

# GCS bucket enumeration
gobuster gcs -w company-names.txt -v

🔧 Troubleshooting

Common Issues

"Permission Denied" or "Access Denied"

"Connection Timeout"

"No Results Found"

Performance Issues

Slow Scanning

🎯 Best Practices

Security Testing Guidelines

  1. Always get proper authorization before testing any target
  2. Start with low thread counts to avoid overwhelming servers
  3. Use appropriate wordlists for the target technology
  4. Respect rate limits and implement delays if needed
  5. Monitor your network traffic to avoid detection

Wordlist Selection

Output Management

# Save results to file
gobuster dir -u https://example.com -w wordlist.txt -o results.txt

# Use quiet mode for clean output
gobuster dir -u https://example.com -w wordlist.txt -q

📚 Additional Resources

Happy hacking! 🚀

Remember: Always test responsibly and with proper authorization.

Changes

3.8.2

3.8.2

  • Fix expanded mode to show the full url again
3.8.1

3.8.1

  • Fix expanded mode showing the entries twice
3.8

3.8

  • Add exclude-hostname-length flag to dynamically adjust exclude-length by @0xyy66
  • Fix Fuzzing query parameters
  • Add --force flag in dir mode to continue execution if precheck errors occur
3.7

3.7

  • use new cli library
  • a lot more short options due to the new cli library
  • more user friendly error messages
  • clean up DNS mode
  • renamed show-cname to check-cname in dns mode
  • got rid of verbose flag and introduced debug instead
  • the version command now also shows some build variables for more info
  • switched to another pkcs12 library to support p12s generated with openssl3 that use SHA256 HMAC
  • comments in wordlists (strings starting with #) are no longer ignored
  • warn in vhost mode if the --append-domain switch might have been forgotten
  • allow to exclude status code and length in vhost mode
  • added automaxprocs for use in docker with cpu limits
  • log http requests with debug enabled
  • allow fuzzing of Host header in fuzz mode
  • automatically disable progress output when output is redirected
  • fix extra special characters when run with --no-progress
  • warn when using vhost mode with a proxy and http based urls as this might not work as expected
  • add interface and local-ip parameters to specify the outgoing interface for http requests
  • add support for tls renegotiation
  • fix progress with patterns by @acammack
  • fix backup discovery by @acammack
  • support tcp protocol on dns servers
  • add support for URL query parameters
3.6

3.6

  • Wordlist offset parameter to skip x lines from the wordlist
  • prevent double slashes when building up an url in dir mode
  • allow for multiple values and ranges on --exclude-length
  • no-fqdn parameter on dns bruteforce to disable the use of the systems search domains. This should speed up the run if you have configured some search domains. https://github.com/OJ/gobuster/pull/418
3.5

3.5

  • Allow Ranges in status code and status code blacklist. Example: 200,300-305,404
3.4

3.4

  • Enable TLS1.0 and TLS1.1 support
  • Add TFTP mode to search for files on tftp servers
3.3

3.3

  • Support TLS client certificates / mtls
  • support loading extensions from file
  • support fuzzing POST body, HTTP headers and basic auth
  • new option to not canonicalize header names
3.2

3.2

  • Use go 1.19
  • use contexts in the correct way
  • get rid of the wildcard flag (except in DNS mode)
  • color output
  • retry on timeout
  • google cloud bucket enumeration
  • fix nil reference errors
3.1

3.1

  • enumerate public AWS S3 buckets
  • fuzzing mode
  • specify HTTP method
  • added support for patterns. You can now specify a file containing patterns that are applied to every word, one by line. Every occurrence of the term {GOBUSTER} in it will be replaced with the current wordlist item. Please use with caution as this can cause increase the number of requests issued a lot.
  • The shorthand p flag which was assigned to proxy is now used by the pattern flag
3.0

3.0

  • New CLI options so modes are strictly separated (-m is now gone!)
  • Performance Optimizations and better connection handling
  • Ability to enumerate vhost names
  • Option to supply custom HTTP headers

gobuster (OJ/gobuster)

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14.2K ·GitHub
Gobuster
What is this?Gobuster is a fast, multi-threaded command-line tool written in Go for brute-forcing web directories/files, DNS subdomains, and virtual hosts, plus enumerating S3/GCS cloud storage buckets and TFTP files.
Is this a GUI app or a command-line tool?It's a pure command-line tool with a mode-based interface: you pick a mode like dir, dns, vhost, s3, gcs, tftp or fuzz and run it with flags.
How do I install and run it?You can install it with Go 1.24+ via the Quick Install method, grab a pre-compiled binary from the releases page, pull the Docker image, or build it from source.
Do I need Go installed to build it?Only if you install from source or via 'go install' — that requires Go 1.24 or higher; the binary releases and Docker image don't need Go at all.
Do I need permission before scanning a target?Yes, the README explicitly warns to always get proper authorization before testing any target, since brute-forcing generates heavy traffic that can trip rate limits or get detected.
Does it run on Windows and macOS, or just Linux?As a Go binary it's cross-platform on Linux, macOS and Windows, and there's also an official Docker image.
What modes does Gobuster support?It has dir, dns, vhost, s3, gcs, tftp and fuzz modes, covering directory/file enumeration, subdomain discovery, virtual host detection, cloud bucket enumeration, TFTP file discovery and custom FUZZ-keyword fuzzing.
Can it find open S3 or Google Cloud Storage buckets?Yes, the s3 and gcs modes let you enumerate open Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage buckets respectively.
Does it support custom wordlists and patterns?Yes, you supply your own wordlist and can optionally apply a patterns file where every '{GOBUSTER}' placeholder is replaced with the current wordlist item.
What are similar projects?bbot, theHarvester, OneForAll, ffuf, masscan, thc-hydra, Sublist3r, nikto
Which topics is it in?brute-force, subdomain-enumeration, fuzzing, scanner, reconnaissance, network, hacking-tool, dns, aws, pentesting, cybersecurity, security-tools
Creator
OJ
Size
1.3 MB
Stars
14.2K
Updated
CommitJan 13Releasev3.8.2Sep 04
Age
11y
Commits · 90 Days