What is this?

Hakscale allows you to scale out shell commands over multiple systems with multiple threads on each system. The key concept is that a master server will push commands to the queue, then multiple worker servers pop commands from the queue and execute them. The output from those commands will then be sent back to the master server.

For example, if you want to run a tool like httpx against 1 million hosts in hosts.txt, you could run:

hakscale push -p "host:./hosts.txt" -c "echo _host_ | httpx" -t 20

This would create 1 million commands and send them to a queue. Then, you can set up as many servers (workers) as you like to pull those commands off the queue and execute them in parallel. To do this, you can simply run the following command:

hakscale pop -t 20

Once the command is complete, the output is sent back to the master server. It feels like you are running a command and viewing output as normal, but the actual work will be distributed over many other machines, so it is much faster.

What can it be used for?

It's a very simple way to distribute scans/commands across many systems. It's perfect for large-scale internet scanning because it is way faster than attempting to do it from a single host. There are probably also a bunch of other uses that I can't think of right now.

How do I use it?

When you're pushing commands to the queue - hakscale will automatically generate the commands based on input from a file. For example, if you wanted to ping a list of hosts, you could use this:

hakscale push -p "host:./hosts.txt" -c "ping _host_" -t 20

In the command above, the -p option specifies a variable name "host", and then a file to take the variables from (hosts.txt). In the -c option, the position of the variable in the command is defined with an underscore on either side: _hosts_. Hakscale will automatically generate the commands based on this input. For example, if the hosts file contained the following:

google.com
bing.com
hakluke.com
haksec.io

Then the commands generated would be:

ping google.com
ping bing.com
ping hakluke.com
ping haksec.io

You can also specify multiple variables, for example:

hakscale push -p "param1:./file1.txt,param2:./file2.txt" -c "nmap -A _param1_ _param2_" -t 20

If multiple variables are specified, every unique combination of those variables is generated.

Options

There are two subcommands, push and pop.

The "push" mode is how you get commands ONTO the stack, and the "pop" mode is how you get commands OFF the stack and execute them. You use "push" on the master server, and "pop" on the workers.

Push options

• -v verbose mode
• -c the command you wish to scale, including placeholders
• -q the name of the queue that you would like to push jobs to
• -p define parameters (variables, as described above)
• -test test mode - print the commands to the terminal but don't actually push them to redis
• -t timeout, set a timeout for the commands (in seconds)

Pop options

• -v verbose mode
• -q name of the queue that you would like to get the jobs from
• -t the number of threads that you'd like to use

Setup

To install the binary on your machine:

go install github.com/hakluke/hakscale@latest

The basic requirements are:

• A computer to push commands
• 1 or more worker computers (usually multiple VPSs)
• A Redis server

You can set it up however you want, but if you would like to use Digital Ocean:

• Set up Redis server (Digital Ocean can do this for you in seconds, click here for $100 credit)
  • Log in to Digital Ocean
  • Create > Databases > Redis
  • Follow the prompts to create the database and save the details
• Spin up a bunch of droplets (or any VPS) to use as workers
  • Create > Droplets
• Set up hakscale config file to include the Redis server details
  • Save the following to ~/.config/haktools/hakscale-config.yml on every VPS/computer that you want to use hakscale with

redis:
  host: your-redis-host
  port: your-redis-port
  password: your-redis-password

• Run hakscale pop on the workers

You're now ready to start distributing your commands!