Week in OSINT #2024-06

Another Monday, another small recap from the world of OSINT! This week I have some tools, tricks, tips and other topics!
Another busy week, with a lot of things happening in the world of OSINT. Due to my busy schedule, I am unable to mention everything, but I did spot some interesting things over on social media that I wanted to share:

Top OSINT Tools
Grep for OSINT
NeedleStack Podcast
UNREDACTED Magazine
Google Cache
Europol Hackathon

Tip: Top OSINT Tools
Ritu Gill [ ] has collected a bunch of OSINT tools that can help you with your investigations. With each tool she explains why she likes the tool, and what you can do with it. It features sites that are well known in the community, like Epieos, the Internet Archive and Whatsmyname. But these lists are always great to share for people that are new to the scene. Of course, at number 1, is her own ‘Forensic OSINT’ tool, that helps you capture evidence from within your browser.

Ritu’s top-11 tools!
Blog: https://www.forensicosint.com/top-osint-tools
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_MvkgEv0sA

Tutorial: Grep for OSINT
Bashinho [ ] solved a tricky question by Tilman Wagner [ ] the other day, by using so called ‘Regular Expressions’ (check out the last item here). By using this query language, he was able to narrow down the amount of ships he needed to check, to only 2!
Original post, translated for your convenience
Right after this, he wrote a blog post about regular expressions, where he explains some basic expressions that can be used to search within data. All his blogs are in German, but they do contain a wealth of information. So use your favourite translation tool, and take time reading up on this useful query language!
Link: https://bashinho.de/2024/02/08/…

Media: NeedleStack Podcast
Last week NeedleStack [ ] published a new, short, episode of their podcast. In it they talk about different free, and some very affordable trainings. Many well-known names and platforms are dropped, but in case you are new to the scene and are looking for ways to enhance your knowledge, or train your skills, then I do recommend you listen to this episode.

Link: https://pod.link/1600516532/episode/…

Tip: UNREDACTED Magazine
After a hiatus of about a year, issue number 6 of the ‘Unredacted’ magazine from Michael Bazzell [ ] has been published! It contains a lot of high-quality articles on privacy and OSINT, but Michael Bazzell does need your help!

Unredacted can only exist if there is enough supplied content. This means, that the e-zine needs your articles! If you have a history of writing solid, high quality articles about OSINT, privacy or related topics, or if you have an interesting story to share, then check out https://unredactedmagazine.com/

An awesome e-zine, filled with privacy and OSINT!
Direct link to PDF: https://inteltechniques.com/issues/006.pdf

Tip: Google Cache
Micah Hofmann [ ] shared some solid tips over on X about other places where caches websites can be found, like Bing, Yandex and even the good old Yahoo! So there are enough options left, and to make things easier, there are also handy extensions to help you find archived or cached pages. Do read up on each of those websites, to make sure you understand what each platform offers.
A plethora of archiving platforms out there!
Link: Chrome extension
Link: Firefox add-on

News: Europol Hackathon
I try to keep these episodes about tips, techniques or tools, and usually stay away from worldly affairs. But once in a while you read an article that just needs to be shared here. Like this initiative, where law enforcement and experts from 23 countries came together in The Hague, to search for Ukrainian children by using open source information. These type of hackathons are extremely difficult, looking at the circumstances involved, so respect for everyone who was involved in this! I already heard about this from several colleagues, but of course Christiaan Triebert [ ] was also quick in sharing the news!
Hackathon at Europol to find Ukrainian children
Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68249102

FUNINT: This Week’s Meme
There are some rather affordable courses out there, like Aware Online and My OSINT Training, just to name two, and they actually give you a lot of bang for your buck! But a lot of you probably have seen those $50 courses, with 100 hours of material, on some shady website… Well, this meme is about THOSE courses!

Have a good week and have a good search!Sector035’s feedRead More