The project snoop 1.4.0 addresses the issue of developing a forensic OSINT-tool that can search for users’ accounts in public data. This intelligence tool is based on open sources and is designed to analyze various sites, forums, and social networks to locate users with specified nicknames. The development of this project is based on research in the field of scraping public data. Two versions of the program, compatible with Linux and Windows, have been prepared for users.
The program is written in Python and is spread under a license that limits its use for personal purposes only. It is worth noting that the project is a branch from the code base of the Sherlock project, which is supplied under the MIT license. The creation of the snoop project branch was necessary due to the limitations faced in expanding the original Sherlock project.
Snoop has been included in the Russian Unified Register of Russian Programs for Electronic Computing Machines and Databases under the code 26.30.11.16, with the description: “Software that ensures the implementation of established actions during operational-search measures :: No.7012 Order 07.10.2020 NO515”. The full version of Snoop is capable of tracking user activity on more than 3700 internet resources, while the demo version primarily focuses on the most popular resources.
The latest version of Snoop brings several improvements and new features, including:
- The search base has been expanded to 3716 sites.
- The search speed in the Linux version of Snoop has been increased by 140%, while the search in the full database Snoop version on GNU/Linux with a minimum internet connection speed of 12Mbps/s for a user’s username in Quick mode (using ‘–quick/-q’) now takes less minutes.
- Snoop now launches faster on older PCs with Windows and HDD.
- A new and intelligent algorithm for auto-detection of sites with unclear or problematic encodings has been added.
- When using CLI mode with an abbreviated database,