__**So You Want to OSINT?**__

So you have decided to put your detective skills to use online and use Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) to research, verify and validate information but don’t know where to begin?

You’ve come to the right place!

OSINT stands for Open Source Intelligence and simply means gathering information from available sources (online, public, legal, and other data sources) for a particular function.

Virtually anyone can use OSINT. Commonly journalists, scientists, hackers and activists use OSINT.

Names Known Alias Personal Information Employer Information Education Information Family Information Address History Criminal Background Court Records Online Activities

And Far More!

Passive Collection: Example: scraping publicly available websites, or retrieving data from open APIs.

Semi-Passive Collection: Example: directing traffic to a target server to obtain information about that server.

Active Collection: Example: PenTesting a server to scan for active ports

https://www.compass-security.com/fileadmin/Research/White_Papers/2017-01_osint_cheat_sheet.pdf

https://github.com/Jieyab89/OSINT-Cheat-sheet

https://www.cheatsheet.wtf/OSINT/

Google Dorks (to search effectively)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EdbKbdP3Tfkj1zBQ4NICLwnvzcM-bX9g/view?usp=sharing

Reverse Planning Permission Search (UK) (to search for people and companies in the UK)

https://search.reversepp.com/

Foller.me Analytics for Twitter (to find known connections and networks)

https://foller.me/

LinkedIn (to find out about work and location history) LinkedIn.com

https://www.linkedin.com/

Social Searcher (To crawl multiple social media sites for names and handle)

https://www.social-searcher.com/

Family Search (To search public records)

https://www.familysearch.org/en/united-states/

Tin Eye

https://tineye.com/

Pimeyes

https://pimeyes.com/en

Google Lens

https://lens.google/

Yandex

https://yandex.com/

1. people are creatures of habit, people often use the same handle or “@“ in multiple places. 2. Looking at personal media on social media is a great place to gather more info about a person (EXIF/Meta will be covered in a later article) 3. Don’t use your own personal social media, emails, or accounts when investigating, many sites will show you as “people you might know” to those you are investigating. 4. Reoccurring followers on multiple social media sites are a great place to find spouses, friends and close associates. 5. Public records in the location that someone lives are often available on tax, courts, and registrar sites.

With these basic tools, you should be off to a good start on your OSINT Journey.