Threre are several searching methods to find users and exploit GitHub’s data fully:
1. Search user:
- By username – https://github.com/search?q=user%3Ausername&type=Users
- By company name – https://github.com/search?q=org%3Acompany+type%3Ausers&type=Users
- By given name – https://github.com/search?q=givenname+in%3Afullname&type=Users
- By full name – https://github.com/search?q=fullname%3Afull+name&type=Users
- By keyword in name – https://github.com/search?q=keyword+in%3Aname&type=Users
- By keyword in Email- https://github.com/search?q=keyword+in%3Aemail&type=Users
- By location – https://github.com/search?q=location%3Aiceland&type=Users
- By programming language – https://github.com/search?q=language%3Apython&type=Users
- By creation date – https://github.com/search?q=created%3A%3C2011-01-01&type=Users
2. Search user’s commits:
- By username – https://github.com/jquery/jquery/commits/master?author=username
- By Email – https://github.com/jquery/jquery/commits/master?author=user@gmail.com
3. Data exploiting hacks:
- On commit, clicking the ‘Blame’ button will show us the code changes history. It can provide us with insights about new features added to the code, or new collaborations – https://docs.github.com/en/github/managing-files-in-a-repository/tracking-changes-in-a-file.
- Cool hack to gather more information on a user is adding ‘.patch’ in the end of the user’s commit URL. for example – https://github.com/tensorflow/docs/commit/715cebd62bc102786f3196d37d2216365cf5e11c.patch will provide us with all the details of the TensorFlow user.
- We can also exploit Github’s API, and find all the users and emails behind a company’s user – https://api.github.com/users/microsoft/events/public. Replace ‘microsoft’ with your competitor name and see which emails operating it. You can search ‘@’ on the page to quickly find the users (ctrl+F – ‘@’).
