Futil is a handy Python based CLI tool that performs several useful functions to search/compare/decode/encodefiles. But wait, there is more! You can also extract EXIF and Metadata with F_util. This Runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux with the only requirement being python3.
Python3
If you do not have python3 install, follow the option below that matches your OS.
Download the Python 3 installer from the official website (https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/) and run it.
Install Python 3 using Homebrew
First, install Homebrew:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
then run
brew install python3
Make this even easier by creating an alias:
alias futil='python3 /Users/cmd/script_s/fileutil.py' >> ~/.zshrc
Use the package manager of your Linux distribution to install Python 3. *you can also use homebrew to install, see macOS install above
run the command
sudo apt-get install python3
Create alias to allow quick use by just typing "futil" from any where on your UNIX based machine, add the following line to your shell configuration file (e.g., ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc):
echo 'alias futil="python3 /path/to/futil.py"' >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc
futil
This can be used without setting an alias:
cd futil
python3 futil.py
Most of my tools are created to use during investigations to reduce time and increase efficency. In the event this tool or any tool I create to aid in an investigation, or if the ability or functionality were called in to question, I provide a functions breakdown of the tool used along with the results of the tool etc. You can see this function breakdown below.
Compares two or more files and returns whether they are the same or different.
Searches for a word in a file and returns the line number where it is found.
Decodes a file with the specified encoding and returns the content as a string.
Encodes a file with the specified encoding.
Extracts EXIF data from a file using the exiftool command line tool.
Extracts metadata from a file using the exiv2 command line tool.
Searches a file for URLs .
If exiv2 is not installed and you receive an error, run:
brew install exiv2