The Argos Project

Over the past two months, we've been working on a script that allows us to have a dedicated OSINT virtual machine in just a few minutes, minimizing our intervention. The result is called Argos and is available here.

This is not yet another Kali clone.

Both Kali linux and Tsurugi linux John These are far superior and comprehensive products compared to the workstation we intend to create. These distros have hundreds of man-hours of work behind them, dedicated to customization, selection and addition of tools, etc., and are designed for much broader uses.

For the type of intelligence activities I normally carry out and for the type of users I have come across in my courses, I need a much leaner and simpler product designed to satisfy information needs different from those required of an OSINT analyst supporting Blue/Red Team.

The basic principle is that the VM that is prepared via Argos presents scripts and report templates closely linked to the needs of a more traditional OSINT analyst.

 

Installation

There are two important conditions for the script to successfully complete the installation process:
– the VM machine is set to English,
– the username of the user used must be “osint“.

The installation of the script, very simple and quick, is described in the paragraph “INSTALLING & RUNNING” from github.

Alternatively, you can copy and paste this string into a terminal window:

sudo apt install -y git && git clone https://github.com/SOsintOps/Argos ~/Downloads/Argos && sudo chmod +x ~/Downloads/Argos/setup.sh && ~/Downloads/Argos/setup.sh

This string allows you to install git, copy all the files locally git of the project and start the installation file setup.sh via a single command line.

 

The tools present

Among the installed software and templates we remember:

OSInt

• Amass
• twint
• instaloader
• InstaLooter
• HTTrack
• Media Info
• ExifTool
• EyeWitness
• sublist3r
• Photon
• The Harvester
• Metagoofil
• recon-ng
• Sherlock
• spiderfoot
• Elasticsearch Crawler
• Ripgrep
• holehe
• kali-anonstealth
• Moriarty-Project V2.6
• Maigret
• Maltego
• and others!

Generic software

• VLC
• Google Earth
• wget
• cherry tree
• Atom
• KeepassXC
• Kazam
• Audacity
• Ripgrep
• Tor Browser
• OpenShot
• Threat Intelligence Resources
• and more!

Report Templates

We've decided to provide as many OSInt report templates as possible. To date, in compliance with the license, we've included the following in the folder: Template those created by Michael Bazzell.

 

We have also inserted into the folder Documents also the template created by Pasquale Stirparo for analysis Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH). For more information on this analysis methodology, you can read these two articles. 1 e 2.

 

Conclusion

During the tests we did on Ubuntu 20.10 and Ubuntu Budgie 20.10 VM we found some small imperfections but no major underlying problems.

I emphasize that this script is only the first step towards creating and customizing a dedicated OSINT VM. We don't consider it perfect yet, but for now it does the dirty work! 😀

Let us know what you think and what tools you'd like to see included here in the comments or in our Telegram group.