It was a Tuesday evening. The blue light from my monitor illuminated the otherwise dark room. I was helping a friend with a missing person case—well, sort of. An old high school friend had received a random text message from a number they didn't recognize, claiming to be a distant relative asking for money. It smelled like a scam, but my friend was worried it might actually be legit.
"Do you trust this number?" I asked. "No," they replied. "But I don't want to ignore a family member in need, either."
This is where PhoneInfoga comes in. In the world of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), you don't always need to hack a server to find the truth; sometimes, you just need to know where to look. PhoneInfoga is one of the best tools for scanning phone numbers to gather footprint information without sending a single packet to the target's device.
Here is how I set it up on my Kali Linux machine to run the trace. install phoneinfoga in kali linux
PhoneInfoga is an open-source tool used for information gathering and OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) analysis. It allows you to scan phone numbers and gather information about their owners. In this guide, we will walk you through the process of installing PhoneInfoga in Kali Linux.
Kali Linux does not come with Docker pre-installed. Here is how to add it:
sudo apt install docker.io -y
sudo systemctl start docker
sudo systemctl enable docker
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
Critical: Log out and log back into your Kali session for the group changes to take effect. The Setup: The "Forgotten Lead" It was a Tuesday evening
PhoneInfoga includes a built-in web server for a nicer output:
phoneinfoga serve -p 8080
Then open your browser to http://127.0.0.1:8080. You can paste numbers into a web form and see formatted results.
PhoneInfoga requires some dependencies to be installed on your system. Run the following command to install them: Installing PhoneInfoga in Kali Linux: A Step-by-Step Guide
sudo apt install -y python3 python3-pip python3-dev
/usr/local/bin/phoneinfoga: Permission deniedSolution: You forgot to make the binary executable. Run:
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/phoneinfoga
Once the image is downloaded, you can run PhoneInfoga. The most common way is to create an alias or run directly:
docker run -it --rm sundowndev/phoneinfoga:latest --help
To make it easier, add an alias to your .bashrc:
echo "alias phoneinfoga='docker run -it --rm sundowndev/phoneinfoga:latest'" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
Now you can simply type phoneinfoga from anywhere.
sudo apt install phoneinfoga -y