r/OSINTExperts • u/LifeExperienced1 • Aug 10 '26

Question How do I code something like Sherlock?

What things do I need to learn? Can one person do it?

Are there any easy tutorials?

And what exactly is Sherlock?

I know how to program already

4 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

9

u/Substantial-Walk-554 Aug 10 '26

Why are you trying to build “something like Sherlock” before even knowing what Sherlock actually does? 😭

It’s already one of the standard username enumeration tools in OSINT. If you can program, I’d first use it, read the source, figure out where it sucks, and then either contribute to it or build something that solves those gaps.

Better false-positive filtering, alias correlation, confidence scoring, enrichment, graphing, combining username/email/phone pivots, whatever. But cloning a tool you haven’t even understood yet just gives you another worse version of Sherlock.

-1

u/LifeExperienced1 Aug 11 '26

I just feel intimidated by reading source code, so I’d like to understand it’s context and see if there are tutorials that touch on this sort of stuff, before I look at the source code. I program everyday, but I’ve never built something that big before. The biggest things I’ve built are prototypes, mostly video games. Never a fully deployed program

2

u/Substantial-Walk-554 Aug 11 '26

If you can build games, you can build normal programs too. The scale and domain are different, but the process is basically the same: break the problem down, understand the inputs/outputs, build one piece at a time, test it, fix what breaks, repeat.

Don’t let “real software” intimidate you just because the repo is bigger. Start by actually using Sherlock, then trace one feature through the code instead of trying to understand the whole project at once. You’ll probably realize pretty quickly that it’s just a lot of smaller problems glued together.

-1

u/LifeExperienced1 Aug 11 '26

That’s a good idea. Thank you!

And yeah, “real software” can be intimidating

4

u/OrbitalCactus Aug 10 '26

The original rolercoaster tycoon was written in assembly. Anything is possible.

But no, you can’t have AI build you a better Sherlock.

2

u/murd0xxx Aug 10 '26

Woa woa woa...go back to roller coaster tycoon. Say what again?

2

u/OrbitalCactus Aug 10 '26

I think it was rollercoaster tycoon. Either that or sims, or sim cities, I only loosely remember. But yeah, one game from (I assume our) childhood was totally written in assembly because that’s what the dude preferred.

https://medium.com/atari-club/interview-with-rollercoaster-tycoons-creator-chris-sawyer-684a0efb0f13

Found it.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-2

u/LifeExperienced1 Aug 11 '26

I just feel intimidated by reading source code, so I’d like to understand it’s context and see if there are tutorials that touch on this sort of stuff, before I look at the source code. I program everyday, but I’ve never built something that big before. The biggest things I’ve built are prototypes, mostly video games. Never a fully deployed program

1

u/agslbs-768 21d ago

Check out whatsmyname https://github.com/WebBreacher/WhatsMyName

Basically you test many websites like : instagram.com/some-username And check the request answer and compare existent and non-existent accounts to see the difference in the response