eviltree: searching for user provided keywords/regex in files

by Nam Phong · September 12, 2025

EvilTree

A standalone python3 remake of the classic “tree” command with the additional feature of searching for user-provided keywords/regex in files, highlighting those that contain matches. Created for two main reasons:

While searching for secrets in files of nested directory structures, being able to visualize which files contain user-provided keywords/regex patterns and where those files are located in the hierarchy of folders, provides a significant advantage.
“tree” is an amazing tool for analyzing directory structures. It’s really handy to have a standalone alternative of the command for post-exploitation enumeration as it is not pre-installed on every Linux distro and is kind of limited on Windows (compared to the UNIX version).

Usage Examples

Example #1: Running a regex that essentially matches strings similar to: password = something against /var/www

Example #2: Using comma-separated keywords instead of regex:

Disclaimer: Only tested on Windows 10 Pro.

Further Options & Usage Tips

Notable features:

Regex -x search actually returns a unique list of all matched patterns in a file. Be careful when combining it with -v (–verbose), try to be specific and limit the length of chars to match.
You can search keywords/regex in binary files as well by providing option -b.
You can use this tool as the classic “tree” command if you do not provide keywords -k and regex -x values. This is useful in case you have gained a limited shell on a machine and want to have “tree” with colored output to look around.
There’s a list variable filetype_blacklist in eviltree.py which can be used to exclude certain file extensions from content searches. By default, it excludes the following: gz, zip, tar, rar, 7z, bz2, xz, deb, img, iso, vmdk, dll, ovf, ova.
A quite useful feature is the -i (–interesting-only) option. It instructs eviltree to list only files with matching keywords/regex content, significantly reducing the output length:

Useful keywords/regex patterns

Regex to look for passwords: -x “.{0,3}passw.{0,3}[=]{1}.{0,18}”
Keywords to look for sensitive info: -k passw,db_,admin,account,user,token

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