System Requirements

OSINT Hub requires the following system components to run properly:

Python

Python 3.12 or higher is required

Verify your Python version:

python --version
# or
python3 --version

If you need to install or upgrade Python, visit python.org.

ExifTool

ExifTool is required for the EXIF metadata extraction functionality. It must be installed as a system binary.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install libimage-exiftool-perl

Verify ExifTool installation:

exiftool -ver

The application will check for ExifTool at:

/usr/bin/exiftool (default)
/usr/local/bin/exiftool (alternative)

Redis (Optional)

Redis is required for Celery task queue functionality, which powers asynchronous operations like Phone Search.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install redis-server
sudo systemctl start redis
sudo systemctl enable redis

Verify Redis is running:

redis-cli ping
# Should return: PONG

If you don’t need asynchronous task processing, Redis is optional. However, the Phone Search feature requires it.

pip and virtualenv

Ensure you have pip (Python package installer) and virtualenv installed:

pip install --upgrade pip
pip install virtualenv

Python Dependencies

OSINT Hub uses the following key Python packages (automatically installed via requirements.txt):

Web Framework

Django 5.2.8 - Main web framework
django-bootstrap5 25.2 - Bootstrap 5 integration
django-csp 3.8 - Content Security Policy middleware
dj-database-url 2.3.0 - Database configuration from URL
python-decouple 3.8 - Environment variable management

OSINT Tools

holehe 1.61 - Email search across platforms
sherlock-project 0.16.0 - Username search across 300+ sites
PyExifTool 0.5.6 - EXIF metadata extraction wrapper
phonenumbers 9.0.18 - Phone number parsing and validation

Async Task Processing

Celery 5.6.1 - Distributed task queue
redis 7.1.0 - Redis Python client
django_celery_results 2.6.0 - Store Celery results in Django DB

Production Server

Gunicorn 23.0.0 - WSGI HTTP server for production
WhiteNoise 6.8.2 - Static file serving for production
psycopg2-binary 2.9.10 - PostgreSQL adapter (for production databases)

Additional Libraries

requests 2.32.5 - HTTP library
beautifulsoup4 4.14.2 - HTML parsing
pandas 2.3.3 - Data manipulation (for CSV exports)
httpx 0.28.1 - Async HTTP client

Database Options

Development

SQLite 3 is used by default for development. No additional installation required - included with Python.

Production (Recommended)

PostgreSQL is recommended for production deployments:

sudo apt install postgresql postgresql-contrib
sudo systemctl start postgresql
sudo systemctl enable postgresql

Storage Requirements

Minimum disk space: 500 MB for application and dependencies
Recommended: 2 GB+ for uploaded files and search results
Media files: Uploaded images/videos are stored in media/ directory
Search results: Username search results stored in ~/.local/share/osint_hub/search_results/ by default

Network Requirements

OSINT Hub makes external requests to various services:

Holehe: Checks email presence on multiple platforms (60s timeout)
Sherlock: Queries 300+ websites for username matches (300s timeout)
IP Lookup: Queries IP geolocation services (15s timeout)

Ensure your firewall allows outbound HTTPS connections. Some OSINT tools may be blocked by restrictive network policies.

Browser Compatibility

The web interface is built with Bootstrap 5 and supports:

Chrome/Edge 90+
Firefox 88+
Safari 14+
Opera 76+

Next Steps

Installation

Follow the step-by-step installation guide

Configuration

Configure environment variables and settings

Installation

Production