README - thesavant42/retrorecon GitHub Wiki

🕶️⌛ RetroRecon

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A Flask web application for exploring Wayback Machine data. It fetches CDX records, stores them in SQLite, and provides a UI to search, tag and manage the results.

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Timeline Analysis. OSINT Archeology.
RetroRecon digs through the internet’s attic to find forgotten, buried, or quietly updated web assets using the Wayback Machine and other archival data sources. It's built to help hackers, researchers, and digital historians reconstruct timelines, compare file changes, and extract secrets from the past.

🔦 What It Does (At a Glance)

  • 🔍 Crawls archived URLs from the Wayback Machine (via CDX API)
  • 🕶️ Groups and filters results by file type, timestamp, tags, or path
  • 🧾 Extracts & analyzes source maps and JavaScript files for secrets
  • 📁 Saves everything locally for offline inspection and auditing
  • 🔍 Flags suspicious patterns, such as leaked API keys, environment files, and exposed .map files

🕵️ Use Cases

  • Security Research – Discover forgotten .env files, exposed sourcemaps, or previously public endpoints
  • OSINT Investigations – Build a historical snapshot of a domain or identify deleted content
  • Digital Forensics – Trace changes in a site’s frontend or backend over time
  • Web Development Post-Mortems – Compare JavaScript bundles, audit version regressions, and timeline UI changes

🔍 Features

Feature Description
Wayback Archive Indexing Pulls structured snapshots via CDX API
Local Source Map Extraction Finds and restores .map files for easier JS debugging
Suspicious Pattern Detection Scans downloaded files for API keys, JWTs, secrets, etc.
Filtering & Grouping Smart filters by type (e.g., .js, .env, .php, .map, etc.)
HTML Report Output (WIP) Generate browsable summaries with tagged snapshots and visual comparisons
Dynamic Rendering API Programmatically render pages from schemas with managed assets
OCI Registry Table Explorer Browse container images as tables with direct download links
HTTPolaroid Snapshots Capture a single URL with full headers, screenshot and assets into a zip

⏱️ Quickstart

git clone https://github.com/thesavant42/retrorecon.git
cd retrorecon
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Start crawling a domain
python retrorecon.py --domain example.com

Use --help to view available options for filtering, exporting, and source map analysis.

🖥️ Running the Web Interface

Launch the Flask UI with the provided scripts. The optional -l flag sets the listening address (default 127.0.0.1).

./launch_app.sh -l 0.0.0.0   # Linux/macOS
.\launch_app.bat -l 0.0.0.0  # Windows

These scripts export RETRORECON_LISTEN so app.py binds accordingly. Never expose the app publicly without proper hardening.

For a quick walkthrough of the common workflow see docs/new_user_guide.md.

Capture a Snap

The HTTPolaroid tool can be triggered from the UI under Tools → Active Recon. It fetches a URL in a headless browser, follows redirects and saves the page, assets, headers and screenshot into a single zip file for download.

🕶️ Philosophy

RetroRecon isn’t just about scraping old URLs. It’s about investigating time — tracing the evolution of a site’s public footprint and finding what was exposed when. Think of it as a tool to:

"Reconstruct the past to understand the present. And maybe… exploit the future."

🗃️ Project Layout

retrorecon/
├── retrorecon.py         # Main CLI interface
├── cdx.py                # Wayback CDX API logic
├── extract.py            # Source map and secrets extraction
├── utils/                # Helpers and formatters
├── static/               # CSS and JS for reports
└── templates/            # Jinja2 templates for report generation

🔍 Sample Output

Coming soon – screenshots of the report interface and extraction logs.

⏱️ Roadmap

  • Full HTML reporting interface (Wayback snapshot explorer)
  • Timeline diff view between asset versions
  • Plugin system for custom extractors (e.g., Postman collections, GraphQL introspection)
  • Integration with jodskeys and darkwing_dox

🕶️ Author

savant42 – Veteran red teamer. Builder of weird tools.
Reach me through GitHub Discussions or post an Issue.

📜 License

MIT License. Use it. Abuse it. Just don’t sell it back to me.