hed allows you to manipulate your hosts file from the command-line. By providing safe and easy commands you can add new hosts and aliases to your environment.

This tool was inspired by my students to whom I teach a Basic Cyber Security class. In this class we utilize Hack The Box as a learning platform and most students struggle with editing the hosts file when they get started. To make this easier for them I wrote a tool that gives them a safe means of adding and removing hosts in this file.

The tool is to be used as a regular user, it will elevate privileges when it requires it by calling sudo and respawning the process.

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• Rust

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If you have the rust package manager cargo installed you can simply install hed by running

cargo install hed

It will pull in the latest version.

1. Create your local bin directory

   mkdir ~/.local/bin

2. Download the latest binary release

   wget https://github.com/credmp/hed/releases/latest/download/hed -O ~/.local/bin/hed

3. Make it executable

   chmod +x ~/.local/bin/hed

4. Ensure the bin directory is in your path

   echo export PATH=\$PATH:~/.local/bin >> ~/.zshrc # if you use zsh
   echo export PATH=\$PATH:~/.local/bin >> ~/.bashrc # if you use bash

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hed show will color print the current hosts file.

hed show

Output:

#                    This is a comment
127.0.0.1	localhost	
::1	localhost	
127.0.1.1	pop-os.localdomain	pop-os

hed add example.com 127.1.1.1

Will add the following line to the hosts file.

127.1.1.1	example.com

hed add demo.example.com

Will update the hosts file to add the subdomain to the parent domain as an alias

127.1.1.1	example.com	demo.example.com

hed delete demo.example.com

If it is the primary name , the shortest alias will be chosen as new name for the host entry. If there are no aliases, the entire record is deleted.

hed delete 127.1.1.1

Will remove the entire record even if there are many aliases defined.

hed alias demo.example.com arjenwiersma.nl

Add a non-subdomain alias to a hostname. This is useful when a host (ip) has many different hostnames. Instead of adding an entry for every unique top level domain they can be added as aliasses.

Use the --file parameter to test the features of hed on a file that is not your hosts file.

hed --file test.txt add example.com 127.0.0.1

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See the open issues for a full list of proposed features (and known issues).

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Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

If you have a suggestion that would make this better, please fork the repo and create a pull request. You can also simply open an issue with the tag "enhancement". Don't forget to give the project a star! Thanks again!

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Write your beautiful code
4. Ensure test coverage did not decrease (cargo tarpaulin --verbose --all-features --workspace --timeout 120 --out Lcov)
5. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
6. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
7. Open a Pull Request

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Distributed under the GPLv3 License. See LICENSE.txt for more information.

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Arjen Wiersma - @credmp - My website

Project Link: https://github.com/credmp/hed

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• My students for showing me that editing a hosts file is not that easy.

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