Ultimate Gobuster Cheat Sheet

Samir KC

March 23, 2026 March 23, 2026

Ultimate Gobuster Cheat Sheet

The high-speed directory, file, and DNS brute-forcer written in Go.

1. Directory Mode (dir)

Find hidden paths, files, and directories on a web server.

Basic Directory Scan

gobuster dir -u http://target.com -w /usr/share/wordlists/dirb/common.txt

Search for File Extensions

Look for specific files like php, txt, or zip.

gobuster dir -u http://target.com -w common.txt -x php,txt,html,zip

Filter Status Codes

Ignore redirects (301, 302) or standard errors (404).

gobuster dir -u http://target.com -w common.txt -b 301,302,404

-b: Blacklist status codes.

2. DNS Mode (dns)

Find subdomains (e.g., admin.target.com, dev.target.com).

Basic Subdomain Scan

gobuster dns -d target.com -w /usr/share/wordlists/SecLists/Discovery/DNS/subdomains-top1million-5000.txt

Show IP Addresses

Show the IP of the found subdomains.

gobuster dns -d target.com -w subdomains.txt -i

3. VHost Mode (vhost)

Find Virtual Hosts. Useful when the server uses the Host header to route traffic (common in CTFs and shared hosting).

gobuster vhost -u http://target.com -w subdomains.txt

Difference:

DNS Mode asks a DNS server "Does this exist?".
VHost Mode visits the IP and changes the HTTP Host header to check if the web server responds differently.

4. S3 Bucket Mode (s3)

Enumerate open AWS S3 buckets.

gobuster s3 -w bucket_names.txt

5. Fuzzing Mode (fuzz)

Replaces the keyword FUZZ in the URL with words from your list. Great for API endpoints or parameters.

gobuster fuzz -u http://target.com/api/v1/FUZZ -w words.txt

gobuster fuzz -u http://target.com/page.php?id=FUZZ -w numbers.txt

6. Performance & Flags

Tune Gobuster to be faster or stealthier.

Flag	Description
`-t 50`	Number of threads (Default: 10). Increase for speed.
`-k`	Skip SSL certificate verification (for self-signed certs).
`-a "UserAgent"`	Set custom User-Agent string.
`-o result.txt`	Save output to a file.
`--proxy "http://127.0.0.1:8080"`	Route traffic through Burp Suite/Proxy.