How to install SpiderFoot on Debian 10?

Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn how to install SpiderFoot on Debian 10.

According to the project website:

SpiderFoot is an open source intelligence (OSINT) automation tool. It integrates with just about every data source available and utilises a range of methods for data analysis, making that data easy to navigate.

SpiderFoot has an embedded web-server for providing a clean and intuitive web-based interface but can also be used completely via the command line. It’s written in Python 3 and GPL-licensed.

So it is an interesting tool if we have servers with various services on the network.

Install Spiderfoot on Debian 10

The installation process is quite simple and we will do it from a terminal environment.

First, update the system completely

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

After that, you have to install some packages needed to run SpiderFoot

sudo apt install python3 python3-pip python3-setuptools
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
python3 is already the newest version (3.7.3-1).
python3 set to manually installed.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  python-pip-whl python3-distutils python3-lib2to3
Recommended packages:
  build-essential python3-dev python3-setuptools python3-wheel
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  python-pip-whl python3-distutils python3-lib2to3 python3-pip
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 28 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,980 kB of archives.
After this operation, 3,772 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

Then, you need to upgrade PIP so that it can work properly

pip3 install --upgrade pip

Now we can download the SpiderFoot package with the help of the wget command.

wget https://github.com/smicallef/spiderfoot/archive/v3.3.tar.gz
--2021-04-01 00:02:11--  https://github.com/smicallef/spiderfoot/archive/v3.3.tar.gz
Resolving github.com (github.com)... 140.82.121.3
Connecting to github.com (github.com)|140.82.121.3|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: https://codeload.github.com/smicallef/spiderfoot/tar.gz/v3.3 [following]
--2021-04-01 00:02:11--  https://codeload.github.com/smicallef/spiderfoot/tar.gz/v3.3
Resolving codeload.github.com (codeload.github.com)... 140.82.121.9
Connecting to codeload.github.com (codeload.github.com)|140.82.121.9|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: ‘v3.3.tar.gz’

v3.3.tar.gz                                    [    <=>                                                                               ]   3.17M  3.80MB/s    in 0.8s    

2021-04-01 00:02:13 (3.80 MB/s) - ‘v3.3.tar.gz’ saved [3324791]

Note: At the time of writing this post, the latest stable version is 3.3.

Decompress the archive with the tar command

tar -xvzf v3.3.tar.gz

Access the folder that has been generated:

cd spiderfoot-3.3

And with PIP, install with the following command:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

After the process is completed, you can start the web interface with the following command:

python3 sf.py -l localhost:5001

To end the execution you can press CTRL + C keys.

Now, if SpiderFoot has been installed on a server, you can alter the command so that it can be accessed by any host

python3 sf.py -l 0.0.0.0.0:5001
2021-04-01 00:06:35,119 [INFO] Starting web server at 0.0.0.0:5001 ...
2021-04-01 00:06:35,142 [WARNING] 
********************************************************************
Warning: passwd file contains no passwords. Authentication disabled.
Please consider adding authentication to protect this instance!
Refer to https://www.spiderfoot.net/documentation/#security.
********************************************************************


*************************************************************
 Use SpiderFoot by starting your web browser of choice and 
 browse to http://<IP of this host>:5001/
*************************************************************

2021-04-01 00:06:35,185 [INFO] [01/Apr/2021:00:06:35] ENGINE Listening for SIGTERM.
2021-04-01 00:06:35,186 [INFO] [01/Apr/2021:00:06:35] ENGINE Listening for SIGHUP.
2021-04-01 00:06:35,186 [INFO] [01/Apr/2021:00:06:35] ENGINE Listening for SIGUSR1.
2021-04-01 00:06:35,186 [INFO] [01/Apr/2021:00:06:35] ENGINE Bus STARTING
2021-04-01 00:06:35,289 [INFO] [01/Apr/2021:00:06:35] ENGINE Serving on http://0.0.0.0:5001
2021-04-01 00:06:35,290 [INFO] [01/Apr/2021:00:06:35] ENGINE Bus STARTED

Now all you have to do is open a web browser and visit http://your-server:5001 and you will see the main screen.

So, you can use it

Conclusion

SpiderFoot is a professional application that allows us to scan our server. For how advanced it is, its use is quite simple and the installation is within the reach of anyone.