hosthunter
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Discovers and extracts hostnames from IPv4/IPv6IPv6The current version of the Internet Protocol, standardized by the IETF, using 128-bit addresses to replace the exhausted IPv4 space. Cyber tools target it because modern networks run dual-stack or IPv6-only. addresses using OSINTOSINTOpen-source intelligence, collecting and analyzing information from publicly available sources. Investigators use it to learn about people, infrastructure or threats. and active reconnaissance techniques, outputting CSV, TXT, or Nessus formats.
Summary
hosthunter is an open-source command-line tool that discovers virtual hostnames sitting behind a list of IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, combining OSINT lookups with active reconnaissance such as SSLSSLA cryptographic protocol for encrypting network connections, now deprecated in favor of TLS but whose name persists colloquially. Cyber tools reference it when handling HTTPS or other encrypted-channel inspection and termination. banner grabbing on ports like 443 and 8443. It runs as a Python script against a target file and writes results as CSV, TXT or Nessus output, making it easy to feed into a vulnerability scanner or a report pipeline. It's aimed at penetration testers and red teamers who need to map an organisation's true attack surfaceattack surfaceThe exposed systems, interfaces and access points an attacker could try to use. It includes internet-facing services as well as identities, software and other reachable resources. beyond what DNS records alone show, rather than at defenders monitoring traffic. It sits in the reconnaissance and asset-discovery space alongside subdomain-enumeration tools, though it works from IP ranges inward rather than from domain names outward. First committed in 2018 with 11 contributors, it has had no commits in the past year, so treat it as stable but no longer actively maintained.
Discovers and extracts hostnames from IPv4/IPv6 addresses using OSINT and active reconnaissance techniques, outputting CSV, TXT, or Nessus formats.
How hosthunter helps
Which hostnames actually resolve to this pile of IP addresses I was handed?
cross-references each address against OSINT sources and returns the virtual hostnames tied to it, going from IP inward rather than from a domain name outward
What virtual hosts is this server actually fronting behind its public IP?
grabs the SSL banner on ports such as 443, 993 and 8443 and pulls the hostnames out of the certificate, revealing vhosts that plain DNS lookups would never surface
Is my organisation's real attack surface bigger than what DNS shows?
runs OSINT and active banner-grabbing together across the whole target list, so a hostname only visible on a certificate still shows up in the results
Which of these hosts should I hand straight to a vulnerability scanner?
writes the discovered hostnames out in Nessus format so they can be fed directly into a scan run without manual reformatting
Which ports are worth checking by hand for a single suspicious IP?
lets you point it at one address and choose which ports get the SSL grab, rather than running the whole target file through the default set
How do I turn a long list of raw IPs into something I can put in a report?
writes results as CSV or TXT alongside the Nessus option, giving output shaped for a report pipeline instead of raw terminal text
Languages
Command line
| option | found in | since | description |
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Values are placeholders taken from each option’s declared default. Nothing is executed here — the output shown is a recording of a run that already happened.
Score card
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Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
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Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
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Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
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Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
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Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
- Community health
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Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
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Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
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Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
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Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply
Nine scores for hosthunter, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.
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Blank means never measured; nothing here is a filled-in zero.
Peer standings are included with Researcher and Business. See how this tool ranks against its competitors, using data we don't publish anywhere else.
See plans →Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.
How this is scored
- Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
- Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
- Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
- Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
- Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
- Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
- Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
- Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.
Release-note detail over time
See how much detail hosthunter puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.
Checking release-note history…
Releases
Nothing shipped since we started watching. Releases and docs updates land here as they happen.
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in SpiderLabs/HostHunter, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 0 ±0 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 0 +0 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 0 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed 100% of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close not measured issues closed, last 12 months
- Open backlog 1 of 5 issues ever filed
- Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
- Open backlog 1
- Contributors / month 0
- Commits / month 0
- Stars 1,172
- other 100%
Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this
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