BACKHOE

OSINT recon that gives you an answer, not a data dump.

Every other OSINT tool hands you raw findings and expects you to already know what matters. BACKHOE scores every finding by actual relevance and tells you the one thing worth reading, in one command, against a target you already have in mind — no wiring six tools together, no reading the source to figure out what the flags do.

See it work — 30 seconds, no signup, no API key

pip install backhoe-osint
backhoe person-check admin@yellowhammertrader.com

Running person-check against admin@yellowhammertrader.com...

╭───────────────────────────── BACKHOE — admin@yellowhammertrader.com ─────────────────────────────╮
│ SPF is present, but DMARC policy is p=none — spoofed mail from this domain is monitored, not     │
│ blocked.                                                                                         │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
┏━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Interest ┃ Type         ┃ Value                    ┃  Live  ┃ Source   ┃ Note                    ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ MED      │ dns_record   │ yellowhammertrader.com   │   -    │ dns      │ DMARC policy is p=none  │
│          │              │                          │        │          │ — spoofed mail is       │
│          │              │                          │        │          │ monitored but not       │
│          │              │                          │        │          │ blocked                 │
│ low      │ email        │ admin@yellowhammertrade… │   -    │ gravatar │ no public Gravatar      │
│          │              │                          │        │          │ profile                 │
└──────────┴──────────────┴──────────────────────────┴────────┴──────────┴─────────────────────────┘

That's real, live output from a real domain — not a mockup. One command, zero API keys, and the tool tells you the actual finding (this domain's mail can be spoofed and only gets monitored, not blocked) instead of handing you an MX record and leaving you to know why that matters.

backhoe domain-audit some-domain-you-care-about.com

is the same deal for subdomain recon — certificate-transparency-log enumeration, scored by name and freshness, zero keys required.

infra-check does active TCP connections (a bounded port scan) — only run it against domains, addresses, and infrastructure you own or are explicitly authorized to test. person-check and domain-audit are fully passive (DNS/HTTP lookups anyone can already make) and don't carry that restriction.

Install

pip install backhoe-osint

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/sloppytopp/BACKHOE.git
cd BACKHOE
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

Use

backhoe domain-audit <target-domain>
backhoe person-check admin@<target-domain>
backhoe infra-check <target-domain-or-ip>

One command, one target, one readable report — no module picker, no target-type dropdown.

• domain-audit — subdomains from certificate transparency logs and (if installed) theHarvester and SpiderFoot, live DNS check, interest-scored by name and freshness. Pass --no-resolve to skip the live DNS check, --no-harvester to skip theHarvester, or --no-spiderfoot to skip SpiderFoot.
• person-check — mail security posture for the email's domain (MX/SPF/DMARC), a Gravatar existence check for the address, and (if a key is available) a HaveIBeenPwned breach-hit check. Pass --no-hibp to skip it — see "Optional: HaveIBeenPwned (HIBP) breach checking" below.
• infra-check — resolves the target, reverse-DNS on each IP, a bounded common-port scan, the live TLS certificate's expiry, and (if keys are available) Shodan and/or Censys host-lookup enrichment with service/product/version and known-CVE data. Pass --no-ports to skip the port scan, --no-shodan/--no-censys to skip either enrichment source. With both on by default and no SHODAN_API_KEY/ CENSYS_API_KEY env var or stored key yet, infra-check prompts for each interactively on first run — see "Optional: Shodan enrichment" and "Optional: Censys enrichment" below.

Test

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

Every network call is mocked, so the full suite runs offline. (DNS resolution tests are the one exception — they hit real DNS, resolving localhost and a guaranteed-bogus .invalid hostname.)

What it does right now (v0.6)

domain-audit

• Pulls every subdomain seen in certificate transparency logs (crt.sh, no API key needed)
• If theHarvester and/or SpiderFoot are installed separately (neither is a BACKHOE dependency — see below), also runs them for additional subdomains and emails. Findings for the same subdomain from multiple sources merge into one row instead of duplicating.
• Flags subdomains with names like admin, dev, staging, vpn, etc. as higher-interest, and ones from certs issued in the last 30 days (recently stood-up infra you may not know about)
• Checks live DNS resolution for every subdomain and suppresses the interest score for ones that no longer resolve — a subdomain that showed up on a cert in 2021 and hasn't resolved since is noise, not a finding, and the report treats it that way

person-check

• MX, SPF, and DMARC lookups for the email's domain — flags a missing SPF or DMARC record as high-interest (your domain's mail can be spoofed) and a DMARC policy of p=none as medium-interest (spoofed mail is monitored, not blocked)
• Gravatar existence check for the address itself (a long-standing, well-known OSINT technique — no auth required, and only ever a positive signal, never a breach)
• (Optional) HaveIBeenPwned breach-hit check for the address, if you provide a HIBP API key — flags any breach hit as high-interest, and a breach that exposed passwords as the highest interest of all. See "Optional: HaveIBeenPwned (HIBP) breach checking" below.

infra-check

• Resolves the target and reverse-DNS's every IP
• A bounded common-port scan (9 ports: ftp/ssh/smtp/http/https/mysql/ rdp/http-alt/https-alt) — flags database/remote-admin ports as high-interest if exposed
• Live TLS certificate expiry — flags an expired or soon-to-expire cert as high/medium-interest
• (Optional) Shodan and/or Censys host-lookup enrichment for open ports — service, product/version, and known CVEs, when available — if you provide a free API key for either or both. Findings from multiple sources on the same port merge into one row. Both run independently of the interception check below since they're passive third-party API calls, not raw TCP from this host. See "Optional: Shodan enrichment" and "Optional: Censys enrichment" below.
• Detects transparent network interception before trusting any of the above. Corporate proxies, security sandboxes, and some VPNs transparently intercept all outbound TCP/TLS traffic and answer on the real target's behalf — every port looks "open" and every certificate is the interceptor's own, not the target's. This isn't hypothetical: it's exactly what happened testing against a real domain during development, where the returned "certificate" was issued by the sandbox's own egress gateway. BACKHOE detects this by handshaking against a guaranteed-unroutable IP (RFC 5737 TEST-NET-3) before the real scan — if that handshake succeeds, port-scan and TLS results are skipped with a clear warning instead of reported as real findings. Run infra-check from a direct, unproxied network for trustworthy port/certificate data.

Across all three profiles

• Fails loud, not quiet: a broken lookup surfaces as a red error and a non-zero exit code (or a yellow warning for a non-fatal check like Gravatar), never as a fake "finding" mixed into real results
• Renders a plain-English summary line plus a sorted, color-coded table — highest interest first

Optional external tools: theHarvester and SpiderFoot

domain-audit shells out to both if it can find them; neither is ever installed as a BACKHOE dependency.

• theHarvester needs to be on PATH (current theHarvester requires Python 3.14+, a different runtime than BACKHOE targets). Install it separately — e.g. uv tool install theHarvester or pipx install theHarvester — per its own docs. Skip it with --no-harvester.
• SpiderFoot has no installable command at all — it's a checkout you run as python3 sf.py .... Clone its repo anywhere and set SPIDERFOOT_HOME to that directory. Skip it with --no-spiderfoot.

If either isn't found, domain-audit prints a yellow warning and continues without it — same non-fatal tier as the Gravatar check in person-check.

Optional: Shodan enrichment

infra-check enriches open-port findings with Shodan host-lookup data (service, product/version, and known CVEs) if you provide a Shodan API key — Shodan is a keyed API, not an installable tool, so this doesn't need anything on PATH.

Resolution order: a SHODAN_API_KEY environment variable, then a key already stored at ~/.config/backhoe/keys.json (created 0600, directory 0700), then an interactive prompt on first run (hidden input, like a password) — leave it blank to skip. Skip Shodan entirely with --no-shodan.

Runs even on a network infra-check detects as intercepting TCP/TLS (see above) — it's a passive API call to Shodan, not raw TCP from this host, so it stays trustworthy where the built-in port scan and TLS fetch don't.

Verification note: built from Shodan's published API docs and tested against mocked HTTP responses only — not yet run against a live Shodan account end-to-end in this environment.

Optional: Censys enrichment

infra-check also enriches open-port findings with Censys host-lookup data (service, product/ version, and known CVEs) if you provide a Censys Personal Access Token — same idea as Shodan enrichment above, and the two can run together in the same scan.

Resolution order: a CENSYS_API_KEY environment variable, then a key already stored at ~/.config/backhoe/keys.json, then an interactive prompt on first run (hidden input) — leave it blank to skip. Skip Censys entirely with --no-censys.

Runs even on a network infra-check detects as intercepting TCP/TLS — it's a passive API call, not raw TCP from this host.

Verification note: unlike Shodan, this backend's API shape was checked against Censys's live current documentation during development — including catching that Censys's older API (Basic Auth, API ID + secret) is deprecated in favor of the newer Bearer-token Platform API this backend uses. Still not run against a live Censys account end-to-end, though — the exact host-lookup response shape is handled defensively rather than confirmed live.

Optional: HaveIBeenPwned (HIBP) breach checking

person-check also checks the address against HaveIBeenPwned's breach database if you provide an HIBP API key — HIBP's by-email breach lookup hasn't been free/keyless since 2019, so this needs a paid key same as Shodan and Censys need theirs. A breach hit is flagged as high-interest, and one that exposed passwords is scored the highest interest of any finding this check can produce.

Resolution order: a HIBP_API_KEY environment variable, then a key already stored at ~/.config/backhoe/keys.json, then an interactive prompt on first run (hidden input) — leave it blank to skip. Skip HIBP entirely with --no-hibp. A missing key skips the check silently; an API error (rate limit, bad key, etc.) prints a yellow warning and person-check continues with whatever it already has.

Verification note: not run against a live HIBP account in this environment, same caveat as Shodan and Censys above. There's also a real structural difference from those two: HIBP has no free key-validation endpoint at all, so unlike Shodan/Censys — which can confirm a key works with a live check before it's stored — this backend validates a key by format only (a 32-character hex string). An actually-wrong key won't surface until the first time you run a real check against it.

What's coming next

• WHOIS-based domain age lookup
• A standalone setup wizard that tests each configured API key live and reports which backends are actually usable before a scan runs (the interactive per-backend key prompt already exists — see "Optional: Shodan enrichment" above — this would be a single upfront command covering all keyed backends at once)
• pip install backhoe-osint and a Docker image, both on the way — see .github/workflows/publish.yml (publishes automatically on a GitHub Release once PyPI/Docker Hub are set up)
• A Homebrew tap (brew install backhoe) — draft formula at packaging/homebrew/backhoe.rb, blocked on a real release existing to generate correct dependency hashes against

License

BACKHOE is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0). In practical terms: you're free to use, modify, and self-host it, but if you run a modified version as a network service (a hosted/SaaS product), you have to make that modified source available too.

Want to use BACKHOE in a commercial product without those AGPL obligations? A commercial license is available — open an issue or reach out to discuss terms.