# digininja/CeWL

CeWL is a Custom Word List Generator

Repository: https://github.com/digininja/CeWL
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/cewl
Language: Ruby
License Family: other
Last push: 2026-06-24T10:13:52+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 63/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 89, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3785, "days_push": 70, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2801, forks 319 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:22.561354+00:00)

## What it is
CeWL is a Ruby command-line tool that spiders a target website to a specified depth and collects unique words into a custom wordlist for use with password crackers such as John the Ripper. It also ships with FAB, a companion CLI that extracts author/creator metadata from already-downloaded files using exiftool.

## Use cases
- generate a custom wordlist from a target website
- spider a site to collect words for password cracking
- build a targeted dictionary for a password audit
- create wordlists for John the Ripper from company web content
- extract author and creator metadata from downloaded documents
- automate wordlist generation for pentest engagements

## When to choose
- you need an organization-specific dictionary rather than a generic wordlist
- you are running a targeted password audit against a known site or company
- you want to mine site terminology, product names, and jargon into a cracking list
- you need to bag author/creator metadata from a pile of downloaded files

## When to avoid
- you need a general-purpose web scraper for data extraction rather than wordlist building
- you have no target website and just want a generic dictionary
- you plan deep crawls with offsite linking, where it can drift onto unrelated domains
- you cannot install Ruby and its gem dependencies including exiftool

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: stable
- function: web-scraping, penetration-testing
- domain: security, penetration-testing
- platform: cli, ruby, cross-platform, windows
- tags: wordlist-generator, password-cracking, password-audit, web-spider, metadata-extraction, john-the-ripper, kali-linux, dictionary-attack, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- digininja/CeWL (main) score 63

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:22.561354+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T08:14:34.069847+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/digininja/CeWL (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:22.561354+00:00, sha fe97a2fa7d17)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.