Install amass with Homebrew, MacPorts, Nix, scoop, winget

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• amass

Project history

The GitHub repository was created in July 2018 and the README identifies the project as an OWASP project maintained around network mapping of attack surfaces and external asset discovery. The program copyright in the README attributes OWASP Amass and contributions to Jeff Foley for 2017-2023, reflecting pre-OWASP or pre-current-repository origins before the current repository history.

Amass evolved from a subdomain-enumeration tool into a broader graph-oriented external attack-surface mapper. Its official documentation now describes YAML configuration for scan scope, data sources, transformations, engine APIs, graph databases, and programmatic use as a Go library.

Adoption history

Amass became a standard package in security distributions and package managers because it automated a tedious recon workflow: combine passive sources, DNS techniques, certificate transparency, web archives, routing data, and optional active probing under one command. The official README lists Homebrew, prebuilt release packages, Docker images, and source installation paths.

The project's own README and REFERENCES file document adoption in talks, trainings, and practitioner workflows, including DEF CON and Red Team Village references, OWASP chapter material, bug bounty tutorials, and testimonials from Accenture and Visma red-team users.

How it is used

Typical use is the amass CLI, especially enumeration against a domain, optionally with configured API keys for premium or authenticated data sources. Configuration is YAML-based: config.yaml controls scope and options, while datasources.yaml stores data-source credentials such as API keys, usernames, passwords, and secrets.

The README also documents Docker usage with a mounted /.config/amass directory so the graph database and output can persist across runs. That detail is important for package users because Amass is not merely a stateless scanner: its value grows when outputs, graph data, and source credentials are managed carefully.

Why package nerds care

Amass is a good example of a security CLI whose packaging is not just about the binary. Useful installs need correct config paths, data-source credential handling, shell ergonomics, and sometimes a database or persistent output directory.

It also shows how modern security tooling lands in general-purpose package managers: it is a Go binary, but it has an unusually large operational surface because its value depends on many external OSINT providers and frequently changing integrations.

Timeline

• 2017: README copyright range begins for Jeff Foley and OWASP Amass contributions.
• 2018-07-10: Current owasp-amass/amass GitHub repository is created.
• 2023-09-10: Amass v4.2.0 release is published.
• 2025-08-03: Amass v5.0.0 release is published.
• 2026-04-07: Amass v5.1.1 release is published.

Related projects

• OWASP is the umbrella project home and provides the public project page.
• Shodan, Censys, SecurityTrails, VirusTotal, DNSDB, Wayback, Common Crawl, GitHub, GitLab, and many other data sources are integrations or data inputs rather than sibling code projects.
• The Amass Go module and scripting/documentation surface support more advanced integrations beyond simple CLI use.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/owasp-amass/amass
• https://api.github.com/repos/owasp-amass/amass/releases?per_page=5
• https://owasp-amass.github.io/docs/configuration/
• https://owasp-amass.github.io/docs/configuration/data_sources/
• https://owasp.org/www-project-amass/
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/owasp-amass/amass/master/README.md
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/owasp-amass/amass/master/REFERENCES.md