Username Anarchy

byr0ute

September 20, 2024

https://github.com/urbanadventurer/username-anarchy

Username Anarchy

Version: 0.6 (20 September 2024)
Author: urbanadventurer (Andrew Horton)
Homepage: https://www.morningstarsecurity.com/research/username-anarchy
Source: https://github.com/urbanadventurer/username-anarchy/
License: MIT

Description

Tools for generating usernames when penetration testing. Usernames are half the password brute force problem.

This is useful for user account/password brute force guessing and username enumeration when usernames are based on the users’ names. By attempting a few weak passwords across a large set of user accounts, user account lockout thresholds can be avoided.

Users’ names can be identified through a variety of methods:

Web scraping employee names from LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social networks.
Extracting metadata from document types such as PDF, Word, Excel, etc. This can be performed with FOCA.

Common aliases, or self chosen usernames, from forums are also included.

Features

Plugin architecture for username formats
Format string style username format definitions
Substitutions. e.g. when only a first initial and lastname is known (LinkedIn lists users like this), it will attempt all possible first names
Country databases of common first and last names from Familypedia and PublicProfiler
Has the Facebook common first and lastnames lists

Extras

Common forum usernames, ordered by popularity

Usage

Username Anarchy is a command line tool.

	 ___ ____                                                        
	|   |    \ ______  ____ _______   ____  _____     __ __    ____  
	|   :    //  ___/_/    \\_  __ \ /    \ \__  \   /  :  \ _/    \
	'   .   / \___ \ \   o_/ |  | \/|   :  \ /  o \ |  . .  \\   o_/ 
	 \_____/ /______) \_____)|__|   |___:  /(______)|__: :  / \_____)
	       _____                         \/       .__     \/      
	      /     \    ____  _____  _______   ____  |  |__  ___.__.   
	     /   o   \  /    \ \__  \ \_  __ \_/ ___\ |  |  \(   :  |   
	    /    .    \|   .  \ /  o \ |  | \/\  \___ |   .  \\___  |   
	    \____:__  /|___:__/(______)|__|    \_____)|___:__//_____|   
	            \/                                                  
	Usage: ./username-anarchy [OPTIONS]... [firstname|first last|first middle last]
	Author: Andrew Horton (urbanadventurer). Version: 0.5

	Names:
	 -i, --input-file FILE     Input list of names. Can be SPACE, CSV or TAB delimited.
	                           Defaults to firstname, lastname. Valid column headings are:
	                           firstinitial, firstname, lastinitial, lastname,
	                           middleinitial, middlename.
	 -a, --auto                Automatically generate names from a country/list
	 -c, --country COUNTRY     COUNTRY can be one of the following datasets:
	                           PublicProfiler:
	                           argentina, austria, belgium, canada, china,
	                           denmark, france, germany, hungary, india, ireland,
	                           italy, luxembourg, netherlands, newzealand, norway,
	                           poland, serbia, slovenia, spain, sweden,
	                           switzerland, uk, us
	                           Other:
	                           Facebook - uses the Facebook top 10,000 names
	     --given-names FILE    Dictionary of given names
	     --family-names FILE   Dictionary of family names
	 -s, --substitute STATE    Control name substitutions
	                           Valid values are 'on' and 'off'. Default: off
	                           Can substitute any part of a name not available
	 -m, --max-sub NUM         Limit quantity of substitutions per plugin.
	                           Default: -1 (Unlimited)

	Username format:
	 -l, --list-formats        List format plugins
	 -f, --select-format LIST  Select format plugins by name. Comma delimited list
	 -r, --recognise USERNAME  Recognise which format is in use for a username.
	                           This uses the Facebook dataset. Use verbose mode to
	                           show progress.
	 -F, --format FORMAT       Define the user format using either format string or
	                           ABK format. See README.md for format details.

	Output:
	 -@, --suffix BOOL         Suffix. e.g. @example.com
	                           Default: None
	 -C BOOL,                  Case insensitive usernames.
	     --case-insensitive    Default: True (All lower case)

	Miscellaneous:
	 -v, --verbose             Display plugin format comments in output and displays
	                           last name searches in plugin format recogniser
	 -h, --help

Example Usage

You know the name of a user but not the username format

./username-anarchy anna key
anna
annakey
anna.key
annakey
annak
a.key
akey
kanna
k.anna
...

You know the username format and names of users

./username-anarchy --input-file ./test-names.txt  --select-format first.last
andrew.horton
jim.vongrippenvud
peter.otoole

You know the server is in France

Note that -a or –auto is required when you do not specify any input names.

./username-anarchy --country france --auto
martin
bernard
thomas
durand
richard
robert
petit
moreau
dubois
simon
martinsmith
martinjohnson
...

List username format plugins

./username-anarchy --list-formats
Plugin name         	Example
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
first               	anna
firstlast           	annakey
first.last          	anna.key
firstlast[8]        	annakey
firstl              	annak
f.last              	a.key
flast               	akey
lfirst              	kanna
l.first             	k.anna
lastf               	keya
last                	key
last.f              	key.a
last.first          	key.anna
FLast               	AKey
first1              	anna0,anna1,anna2
fl                  	ak
fmlast              	abkey
firstmiddlelast     	annaboomkey
fml                 	abk
FL                  	AK
FirstLast           	AnnaKey
First.Last          	Anna.Key
Last                	Key
FML                 	ABK

Automatically recognise the username format in use

./username-anarchy --recognise j.smith
Recognising j.smith. This can take a while.
Username format j.smith recognised. Plugin name: f.last

Input Files

To generate usernames for more than one user account you must provide the names in a text file. This can be either TAB or CSV delimited.

Example 1

Firstname,Lastname
Andrew,Horton
Jim, von Grippenvud
Peter,O'Toole

Example 2

LinkedIn often shows the firstname and last initial

firstname,lastinitial
andrew,h
foo,b

Example 3

Mixed set of names

firstname,firstinitial,middleinitial,lastname,lastinitial
andrew,,,horton,
jim,,,,v
,p,,o'toole,

Custom Plugins

Command line Plugins

Define a custom plugin format using either the ABK or format string format. Specify the username format with -F or –format

Example 1

./username-anarchy -F "v-annakey" andrew horton
v-andrewhorton

Example 2

./username-anarchy -F "v-%f%l" -a -C poland
v-nowaksmith
v-nowakjohnson
v-nowakjones
v-nowakwilliams
v-nowakbrown
v-nowaklee
v-nowakkhan
v-nowaksingh
v-nowakkumar
v-nowakmiller
...

Writing Plugins

You can add plugins to username anarchy by defining them in format-plugins.rb

This example uses the ABK format.

Plugin.define "last.first" do
	def generate(n)
		n.format_anna("key.anna")
	end
end

This example uses the format string format.

Plugin.define "first" do
	def generate(n)
		n.format("%f")
	end
end

Format Strings

Username Anarchy provides a method of defining a username format with format strings.

%F – Firstname
%M – Middlename
%L – Lastname
%f – firstname
%m – middlename
%l – lastname
%i.f – first initial
%i.m – middle initial
%i.l – last initial
%i.F – First initial
%i.M – Middle initial
%i.L – Last initial
%D – Digit range 0..9
%DD – Digit range 00..99

ABK Format

Username Anarchy provides a method of defining a username format with ABK format which translates to format strings.

Anna – %F
Boom – %M
Key – %L
anna – %f
boom – %m
key – %l
A – %i.F
B – %i.M
K – %i.L
a – %i.f
b – %i.m
k – %i.l

Forum Usernames

The forum-names folder contains:

common-forum-names.csv – A CSV file with forum names and the frequency they appeared with
common-forum-names-top10k.txt – The top 10,000 forum names
common-forum-names.txt – 1,774,313 forum names
phpbb-scraper.rb – a web scraper for usernames on PHPbb forums