edoardottt/secfiles is a curated, MIT-licensed collection of reference files and cheat sheets assembled for authorized penetration tests, security assessments, and bug bounty engagement preparation.
| Tool | edoardottt/secfiles — a personal collection of useful files for penetration tests, security assessments, bug bounty and other security work |
| Category | Security reference files, cheat sheets, and auxiliary wordlists |
| Primary Use | Serving as a reusable reference library during authorized penetration-testing and bug-bounty engagements, supplementing larger collections like SecLists |
| Safe Use | Intended for penetration testers and bug bounty hunters operating exclusively under written authorization, in lab environments, or on programs with defined scope |
| Telemetry Note | As a static file repository it generates no network traffic itself; any telemetry derives from how practitioners deploy individual files within their authorized tooling |
secfiles is one of those quiet, utilitarian repositories that earns its keep not through code but through curation. Maintained by Edoardo Ottavianelli (edoardottt, a well-known open-source security developer also recognized as a GitHub Star), it bundles what the README describes simply as "useful files for penetration tests, security assessments, bug bounty and other security related stuff." There is no binary, no daemon, no package to install — the product is the repository content itself, written primarily in Shell per the language metadata, and distributed under the permissive MIT license.
The repository sits at roughly 240 stars at the time of writing, which is a respectable footprint for what is essentially a personal reference collection. Its topic tags tell the story of its audience: penetration-testing, bug-bounty, bugbounty-tools, redteam, redteaming, security-audit, and notably wordlist and wordlists, alongside seclists — an explicit nod to the collection it most often gets compared against. The defensive-security tag also appears, hinting that the contents have value for blue-teamers reviewing what attackers might throw at their perimeters.
What secfiles represents architecturally is the practitioner's working notebook made public. Every experienced operator accumulates a private directory of payloads, cheats, syntax reminders, and edge-case references that proved useful in real engagements. Publishing that directory does two things: it forces the author to keep the material organized, and it gives the community a vetted, opinionated alternative to trawling scattered gists and forum posts. The acknowledgments section reinforces this provenance — the README credits the HackTricks book, allanlw's SVG cheatsheet, and a securifera gist as sources, meaning portions of the collection are consolidated and attributed community knowledge rather than purely original material.
Acquisition is deliberately minimal. The README offers exactly one instruction — git clone https://github.com/edoardottt/secfiles — after which the files are on disk and ready to be referenced directly or fed into other tooling. There is no installer, no dependency chain, and no configuration step, which is exactly what you want from a reference repository: zero attack surface in the tooling itself and zero friction in uptake. Contributions follow the standard GitHub workflow; the README directs users to open an issue if they spot an error, which suggests corrections are triaged rather than casually merged.
Versioning is handled through GitHub's release mechanism, with the README pointing to the repository's release notes for detailed change documentation. For a file collection this matters more than it might appear: wordlists and reference sheets degrade in usefulness when they go stale, and a visible changelog lets teams diff what changed between pulls. If you mirror secfiles into an internal engagement VM image or a shared assessment toolkit, pinning to a tagged release rather than tracking main gives you reproducibility — the same property you would demand from any other tool in the chain.
Where this fits in an authorized workflow is straightforward. During scoping and recon phases of a contracted penetration test or an in-scope bug bounty program, operators constantly need quick syntax references, format-specific payload files, and targeted lists that are smaller and sharper than the encyclopedic collections. That last point is the real differentiator versus SecLists: secfiles is one practitioner's filtered subset, which means the signal-to-noise ratio for any given lookup tends to be higher. You trade breadth for curation, and in the middle of an engagement that trade is usually worth it.
The seclists topic tag is worth dwelling on because it frames the ecosystem positioning. SecLists is the canonical mega-collection; secfiles does not compete with it so much as sit beside it. A mature toolkit references both — the big collection for exhaustive enumeration, the curated one for the files the author found actually useful in practice. The SVG-related acknowledgment (allanlw's cheatsheet) also signals coverage of niche attack surfaces like file-format handling, areas where generic wordlists are thin and targeted references pay off. These are exactly the corners where authorized assessments on complex applications benefit from accumulated operator notes.
From a defensive-research standpoint, the collection is equally legible. Blue-teamers building detection content, tuning WAF rules, or constructing lab exercises can consume the same files to understand what offensive tooling commonly references. Studying what a working pentester keeps on hand is a cheap form of threat intelligence about technique prevalence — the files that survive in a personal collection are, by construction, the ones that get used. The defensive-security topic on the repo confirms this dual audience is intended, not incidental.
Operational hygiene notes for teams adopting it: because this is raw file content rather than packaged software, standard supply-chain review applies lightly but genuinely. Pin a release, record the commit hash in your engagement documentation, and review file contents before feeding anything into automated tooling — the same discipline you apply to any third-party wordlist. The MIT license makes internal redistribution and inclusion in commercial assessment toolkits legally unproblematic, with only attribution obligations.
What to watch going forward is release cadence and issue activity, the two honest signals of whether a reference collection stays alive. The maintainer's broader reputation for consistent open-source maintenance, plus the hacktoberfest topic indicating periodic community contribution drives, suggests the repository is actively tended rather than archived. For practitioners, secfiles is best evaluated the way all reference collections are: clone it, use it on a lab target or an authorized program, and let your own hit-rate decide whether it earns a permanent slot next to SecLists in your toolkit.
edoardottt/secfiles.Educational analysis for authorized security professionals. Use only in controlled, authorized environments.
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