Social Mapper automatically locates profiles on social media sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, Vkontakte and microblogging websites like Weibo and Douban. Automated searching of profiles can be performed much faster and for many people simultaneously.
“Performing intelligence gathering is a time-consuming process, it typically starts by attempting to find a person’s online presence on a variety of social media sites. While this is an easy task for a few, it can become incredibly tedious when done at scale.” Trustwave states in a blog post.
“Introducing Social Mapper an open source intelligence tool that uses facial recognition to correlate social media profiles across a number of different sites on a large scale. Trustwave, which provides ethical hacking services, has successfully used the tool in a number of penetration tests and red teaming engagements on behalf of clients.”
How does Social Mapper work?
Social Mapper doesn’t require API access to social networks. On the basis of the requirement, the Social Mapper first prepares a list of targeted people for processing. It then uses names and photos as input to scan social media profiles online. The software tool then generates reports in the form of spreadsheets, which include profile information like photos, emails, etc. Based on provided names and photos, it takes approximately 60-70 seconds to scan one profile. It takes no less than 15 hours for searching details of 1,000 people.
Social Mapper “takes an automated approach to searching popular social media sites for names and pictures of individuals to accurately detect and group a person’s presence, outputting the results into a report that a human operator can quickly review”.
How to install Social Mapper
Social Mapper is written in Python and runs on Linux, chromeOS (Developer Mode), Windows, and Mac. However, before installing Social Mapper, latest version of Firefox, the Selenium API, and Geckodriver needs to be installed.
Running the Tool
After installing Social Mapper, it can be set into action by running the social_mapper.py file with target information and target social media site. The basic syntax of the command is as follows.
social_mapper.py -f -i -m