kb

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A minimalist knowledge base manager

kb. A minimalist knowledge base manager

Date: 2020-09-11

Version: 0.1.1

PURPOSE

kb is a text-oriented minimalist command line knowledge base manager. kb can be considered a quick note collection and access tool oriented toward software developers, penetration testers, hackers, students or whoever has to collect and organize notes in a clean way. Although kb is mainly targeted on text-based note collection, it supports non-text files as well (e.g., images, pdf, videos and others).

The project was born from the frustration of trying to find a good way to quickly access my notes, procedures, cheatsheets and lists (e.g., payloads) but at the same time, keeping them organized. This is particularly useful for any kind of student. I use it in the context of penetration testing to organize pentesting procedures, cheatsheets, payloads, guides and notes.

I found myself too frequently spending time trying to search for that particular payload list quickly, or spending too much time trying to find a specific guide/cheatsheet for a needed tool. kb tries to solve this problem by providing you a quick and intuitive way to access knowledge.

In few words kb allows a user to quickly and efficiently:

collect items containing notes,guides,procedures,cheatsheets into an organized knowledge base;
filter the knowledge base on different metadata: title, category, tags and others;
visualize items within the knowledge base with (or without) syntax highlighting;
grep through the knowledge base using regexes;
import/export an entire knowledge base;

Basically, kb provides a clean text-based way to organize your knowledge.

INSTALLATION

The installation of kb can be performed by simply doing:

git clone https://github.com/gnebbia/kb
cd kb
pip install -r requirements.txt
python setup.py install

Tip for GNU/Linux and MacOS users: For a better user experience, also set the following kb bash aliases:

cat <<EOF > ~/.kb_alias
alias kbl="kb list"
alias kbe="kb edit --id"
alias kba="kb add"
alias kbv="kb view --id"
alias kbd="kb delete --id"
alias kbg="kb grep"
alias kbt="kb list --tags"
EOF
echo "source ~/.kb_alias" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.kb_alias

Tip for Windows users: Do not use notepad as %EDITOR%, kb is not compatible with notepad, a reasonable alternative is notepad++.

USAGE

A quick demo of a typical scenario using kb:

A quick demo with kb aliases enabled:

A quick demo for non-text documents:

List artifacts

List all artifacts contained in the kb knowledge base:

kb list

# or if aliases are used:
kbl

List all artifacts containing the string "zip":

kb list zip

# or if aliases are used:
kbl zip

List all artifacts belonging to the category "cheatsheet":

kb list --category cheatsheet
# or
kb list -c cheatsheet

# or if aliases are used:
kbl -c cheatsheet

List all the artifacts having the tags "web" or "pentest":

kb list --tags "web;pentest"

# or if aliases are used:
kbl --tags "web;pentest"

List using "verbose mode":

kb list -v

# or if aliases are used:
kbl -v

Add artifacts

Add a file to the collection of artifacts

kb add ~/Notes/cheatsheets/pytest

# or if aliases are used:
kba ~/Notes/cheatsheets/pytest

Add a file to the artifacts

kb add ~/ssh_tunnels --title pentest_ssh --category "procedure" \
    --tags "pentest;network" --author "gnc" --status "draft"

Add all files contained in a directory to kb

kb add ~/Notes/cheatsheets/general/* --category "cheatsheet"

Create a new artifact from scratch

kb add --title "ftp" --category "notes" --tags "protocol;network"
# a text editor ($EDITOR) will be launched for editing

Delete artifacts

Delete an artifact by ID

kb delete --id 2

# or if aliases are used:
kbd 2

Delete multiple artifacts by ID

kb delete --id 2 3 4

# or if aliases are used:
kbd 2 3 4

Delete an artifact by name

kb delete --title zap --category cheatsheet

View artifacts

View an artifact by id

kb view --id 3
# or
kb view -i 3

# or if aliases are used:
kbv 3

View an artifact by name

kb view --title "gobuster"
# or
kb view -t "gobuster"

View an artifact without colors

kb view -t dirb -n

View an artifact within a text-editor

kb view -i 2 -e

# or if aliases are used:
kbv 2 -e

Edit artifacts

Editing artifacts involves opening a text editor. Hence, binary files cannot be edited by kb.

The editor can be set by the "EDITOR" environment variable.

Edit an artifact by id

kb edit --id 13

# or if aliases are used:
kbe 13

Edit an artifact by name

kb edit --title "git" --category "cheatsheet"
# or
kb edit -t "git" -c "cheatsheet"

Grep through artifacts

Grep through the knowledge base

kb grep "[bg]zip"

# or if aliases are used:
kbg "[bg]zip"

Grep (case-insensitive) through the knowledge base

kb grep -i "[BG]ZIP"

Grep in "verbose mode" through the knowledge base

kb grep -v "[bg]zip"

Import/Export/Erase a knowledge base

Export the current knowledge base

kb export

This will generate a .kb.tar.gz archive that can be later be imported by kb.

Import a knowledge base

kb import archive.kb.tar.gz

NOTE: Importing a knowledge base erases all the previous data. Basically it erases everything and imports the knowledge base.

Erase the entire knowledge base

kb erase

Donations

I am an independent developer working on kb in my free time, if you like kb and would like to say thank you, buy me a beer!

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

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