CeWL

CeWL (Custom Word List generator) is a Ruby application that spiders a given URL to a specified depth and returns a list of words. This list can be used to create a custom wordlist for password cracking tools like John the Ripper or Hydra. It is highly effective for generating wordlists tailored to a specific target, as it collects words directly from their web content.

Basic Usage

Generate a Wordlist from a Website

This command crawls a website to a specified depth, extracts words of a minimum length, converts them to lowercase, and saves the output to a file. This is a common first step in gathering potential passwords for a target organization.

  • -d 4: Sets the crawl depth to 4 links deep from the initial page.
  • -m 6: Sets the minimum word length to 6 characters.
  • --lowercase: Converts all parsed words to lowercase.
  • -w example.wordlist: Writes the final wordlist to the specified file.
cewl https://www.example.com -d 4 -m 6 --lowercase -w example.wordlist

Tags

username-cewl

Notes

Some of this writeup is revised by AI. My own writing can be a bit clunky, so I get it to review certain parts to make things flow better and be a bit easier to read.

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Last updated: 2025-10-26