On GitHub, projectdiscovery/dnsx has picked up 2.9k stars, Developer Tools, Go. dnsx is a fast and multi-purpose DNS toolkit allow to run multiple DNS queries of your choice with a list of user-supplied resolvers.
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dnsx is a fast and multi-purpose DNS toolkit designed for running various probes through the retryabledns library. It supports multiple DNS queries, user supplied resolvers, DNS wildcard filtering like shuffledns etc.
Features
Simple and Handy utility to query DNS records.
A, AAAA, CNAME, PTR, NS, MX, TXT, SRV, SOA query support
DNS Resolution / Brute-force support
Custom resolver input support
Multiple resolver format (TCP/UDP/DOH/DOT) support
stdin and stdout support
Automatic wildcard handling support
Installation Instructions
dnsx requires go1.21 to install successfully. Run the following command to install the latest version:
go install -v github.com/projectdiscovery/dnsx/cmd/dnsx@latest
Usage
dnsx -h
This will display help for the tool. Here are all the switches it supports.
INPUT:
-l, -list string list of sub(domains)/hosts to resolve (file or stdin)
-d, -domain string list of domain to bruteforce (file or comma separated or stdin)
-w, -wordlist string list of words to bruteforce (file or comma separated or stdin)
QUERY:
-a query A record (default)
-aaaa query AAAA record
-cname query CNAME record
-ns query NS record
-txt query TXT record
-srv query SRV record
-ptr query PTR record
-mx query MX record
-soa query SOA record
-any query ANY record
-axfr query AXFR
-caa query CAA record
-recon query all the dns records (a,aaaa,cname,ns,txt,srv,ptr,mx,soa,axfr,caa)
-e, -exclude-type value dns query type to exclude (a,aaaa,cname,ns,txt,srv,ptr,mx,soa,axfr,caa) (default none)
FILTER:
-re, -resp display dns response
-ro, -resp-only display dns response only
-rc, -rcode string filter result by dns status code (eg. -rcode noerror,servfail,refused)
PROBE:
-cdn display cdn name
-asn display host asn information
RATE-LIMIT:
-t, -threads int number of concurrent threads to use (default 100)
-rl, -rate-limit int number of dns request/second to make (disabled as default) (default -1)
UPDATE:
-up, -update update dnsx to latest version
-duc, -disable-update-check disable automatic dnsx update check
OUTPUT:
-o, -output string file to write output
-j, -json write output in JSONL(ines) format
-omit-raw, -or omit raw dns response from jsonl output
-ot, -output-template string custom output template (e.g. -ot '{{host}} {{a}}')
DEBUG:
-hc, -health-check run diagnostic check up
-silent display only results in the output
-v, -verbose display verbose output
-raw, -debug display raw dns response
-stats display stats of the running scan
-version display version of dnsx
-nc, -no-color disable color in output
OPTIMIZATION:
-retry int number of dns attempts to make (must be at least 1) (default 2)
-hf, -hostsfile use system host file
-trace perform dns tracing
-trace-max-recursion int Max recursion for dns trace (default 32767)
-resume resume existing scan
-stream stream mode (wordlist, wildcard, stats and stop/resume will be disabled)
-timeout value maximum time to wait for a DNS query to complete (default 3s)
CONFIGURATIONS:
-auth configure projectdiscovery cloud (pdcp) api key (default true)
-r, -resolver string list of resolvers to use (file or comma separated)
-wt, -wildcard-threshold int wildcard filter threshold (default 5)
-aw, -auto-wildcard automatically detect wildcard domains for filtering
-wd, -wildcard-domain string domain name for manual wildcard filtering (mutually exclusive with -auto-wildcard; other flags will be ignored - json output recommended)
Running dnsx
DNS Resolving
Filter active hostnames from the list of passive subdomains, obtained from various sources:
The -output-template (-ot) flag lets you customize the output format using a template, instead of the default bracketed layout (e.g. example.com [A] [104.20.23.154]). You specify the template directly on the command line to control how the resolved data is presented.
Template variables map to the same field names used in the JSONL output (-json), so any of the following can be referenced as {{field}}:
host, a, aaaa, cname, ns, txt, mx, srv, ptr, soa, caa, ttl, resolver, status_code, cdn-name, cdn-type, asn, query-time. A convenience {{ip}} alias holds the combined A and AAAA records.
Records with multiple values (e.g. several A records) are comma-joined within a single field.
[!NOTE]
If a specified field does not exist or does not contain a value, it is simply omitted from the output. -output-template cannot be combined with -json or -raw.
DNS Bruteforce
Bruteforce subdomains for given domain or list of domains using d and w flag:
Values are accepted from stdin for all the input types (-list, -domain, -wordlist). The -list flag defaults to stdin, but the same can be achieved for other input types by adding a - (dash) as parameter:
A special feature of dnsx is its ability to handle multi-level DNS based wildcards, and do it so with a very reduced number of DNS requests. Sometimes all the subdomains will resolve, which leads to lots of garbage in the output. The way dnsx handles this is by keeping track of how many subdomains point to an IP and if the count of the subdomains increase beyond a certain threshold, it will check for wildcards on all the levels of the hosts for that IP iteratively.
-auto-wildcard and -wd / -wildcard-domain are mutually exclusive. Use -wd when you want the existing manual single-domain wildcard filtering flow; use -auto-wildcard when you want dnsx to detect wildcard roots automatically across mixed-domain input.
Dnsx as a library
It's possible to use the library directly in your golang programs. The following code snippets is an example of use in golang programs. Please refer to here for detailed package configuration and usage.
package main
import (
"fmt"
"github.com/projectdiscovery/dnsx/libs/dnsx"
)
func main() {
// Create DNS Resolver with default options
dnsClient, err := dnsx.New(dnsx.DefaultOptions)
if err != nil {
fmt.Printf("err: %v\n", err)
return
}
// DNS A question and returns corresponding IPs
result, err := dnsClient.Lookup("hackerone.com")
if err != nil {
fmt.Printf("err: %v\n", err)
return
}
for idx, msg := range result {
fmt.Printf("%d: %s\n", idx+1, msg)
}
// Query
rawResp, err := dnsClient.QueryOne("hackerone.com")
if err != nil {
fmt.Printf("err: %v\n", err)
return
}
fmt.Printf("rawResp: %v\n", rawResp)
jsonStr, err := rawResp.JSON()
if err != nil {
fmt.Printf("err: %v\n", err)
return
}
fmt.Println(jsonStr)
return
}
📋 Notes
As default, dnsx checks for A record.
As default dnsx uses Google, Cloudflare, Quad9 resolver.
Custom resolver list can be loaded using the r flag.
-auto-wildcard automatically detects wildcard domains across multiple registrable roots in a single run.
Domain name (-wd) is required only for manual wildcard filtering and can not be used together with -auto-wildcard.
When using manual wildcard filtering with -wd, other DNS record flags are ignored and JSON output is recommended.
DNS resolution (l) and DNS brute-forcing (w) can't be used together.
VPN operators tend to filter high DNS/UDP traffic, therefore the tool might experience packets loss (eg. Mullvad VPN). Check this potential solution.
How active is development on projectdiscovery/dnsx?
The most recent commit recorded on projectdiscovery/dnsx was 3 months ago, based on the GitHub push timestamp. The repository has 326 forks — one of the better signals of community interest.
How many stars does projectdiscovery/dnsx have?
projectdiscovery/dnsx has 2.9k GitHub stars — refresh the page for the live number, or check github.com/projectdiscovery/dnsx. TopGit mirrors GitHub's count but does not claim minute-by-minute accuracy.
Is projectdiscovery/dnsx open source?
Yes — projectdiscovery/dnsx ships under the MIT license, which makes its source code freely readable (and, depending on license terms, forkable and reusable). Source: github.com/projectdiscovery/dnsx.
What else is in the Developer Tools space?
projectdiscovery/dnsx is tracked by TopGit under the Developer Tools category, alongside 7 GitHub-tagged topics. Trending and Topics pages list peer repositories of comparable stars and language.
What topics is projectdiscovery/dnsx associated with?
GitHub's repository topics for projectdiscovery/dnsx: "cli", "dns-bruteforcer", "dns-client", "dns-records", "dns-resolution", "hacktoberfest", "wildcard-filtering". TopGit's editorial category is Developer Tools.
Where can I see projectdiscovery/dnsx in action?
The project maintains a homepage at https://docs.projectdiscovery.io/tools/dnsx. The README tab on this page also usually contains screenshots and a quickstart.
Where do I read more about projectdiscovery/dnsx?
This TopGit page is a snapshot — the READ ME tab shows the project's own README content (links stripped, images preserved). The GitHub repository at github.com/projectdiscovery/dnsx is the definitive source.
Read full README in the tab above.
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