Week in OSINT #2020-47
What a week it has been, way too much work and so little time! But as promised, we're back with another newsletter with some nifty tips and tricks and (hopefully) interesting content!
Welcome to the overview of week number 47 already! Slowly we are heading towards the end of the year, and I can't wait to have some time to work on some of the assignments I have planned for a new 'OSINT quiz'. Besides that, I'm also actually looking forward for some time off from this, like I do every year. So another couple of newsletters, and then it's time for the yearly break. But for now, it's time to dive into the following topics:
- Facebook Graph Search
- Extract Facebook Friends
- The Unknown Hiker
- Dark Web Basics
- Epieos Phone Numbers
- Nitter
- Parler
Tip: Facebook Graph Search
Micah Hoffman tweeted a new tip on how you were able to use the old Facebook Graph searches, by using a different subdomain. No clue whether this news is old already, but it does show that with some creativity people always seem to find a small workaround whenever there is a little set-back!
For Facebook #OSINT - Still want to use the sowdust code on sites like @_IntelligenceX but cannot do to the new UI on FB?
— Micah (@WebBreacher) November 9, 2020
Add all the filters to the sowdust tool, then copy the URL and replace "www." with "apps." at the beginning of the URL. It'll switch to the old/classic UI.
Intelligence X: https://intelx.io/tools?tab=facebook
Sowdust: https://sowdust.github.io/fb-search/
Tip: Extract Facebook Friends
From the Tweet by Micah Hoffman to the next one. Because Aware Online combined several ideas and came up with another way of exporting a list of friends from a Facebook account. Just to show the power of the internet and creative minds!
★ #OSINT tip ★ Export facebook friends
— Aware Online (@aware_online) November 18, 2020
1. Download Link Gopher add-on
2. Click on "friends" tab
3. Replace www with apps
4. Extract links by filter "profile_friend"
5. Have fun!
Thanks @WebBreacher & @technisette for bringing me to this idea.
https://twitter.com/aware_online/status/1328965379620794368
Article: The Unknown Hiker
Even though the case isn't solved yet, it does show how several areas of expertise can work together to try and crack an unsolved case. I'm sharing this story here because it involves a lot of crowd sourced work, besides the usual police investigations and even DNA matching. A weird story and the efforts to track down the identity of an unknown man.
Link: https://www.wired.com/story/nameless-hiker-mostly-harmless-internet-mystery
Tutorial: Dark Web Basics
For people that are new to TOR, or the dark web, OSINT Combine has written a short tutorial on how to get started with the TOR Browser. Even if you don't want to touch the dark web, it can also help you to gain some anonymity when browsing the internet itself. And in case you want to take your first steps on onion-sites, this little write up will give you some basic information on how to do that.
Link: https://www.osintcombine.com/post/dark-web-searching
Site: Epieos Phone Numbers
The people at Epieos has created another online tool, this time to search for phone numbers. You simply enter a number and it will try to retrieve info on a Signal, Skype and Telegram account. I am including this here for people that want to play around a bit with it, or are new to the scene. I won't use it, since I'm personally not a fan of such tools because I'd rather enter it in a research phone. Why would I do that? I will be able to sync it with platforms like WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and other social media or chat apps to get more results than these three here.
You've just received a call and need to know who's behind it?
— Epieos (@epieos) November 17, 2020
Our new tool shows you the presence of a phone number on different social networks with the usernames and photos used.https://t.co/vdqUlwQH2y pic.twitter.com/oMXhR9gcNq
Link: https://tools.epieos.com/phone.php
Site: Nitter
Months ago I found the website Nitter when working on WhatsMyName, but for some reason I never added it to my newsletter. And then Henk van Ess tweeted about this nifty little tool last week! I really love this site, but what does it do? It can provides you all the info from Twitter profiles, without the platform tracking your every move. But that's not all, because the tool was built by 'Amolith' and that he has more services on https://nixnet.services/. Check out Bilbiogram, a front-end for Instagram (make sure to pick a different instance since the main one is blocked). Or have a look at searX, a meta search engine, or RSS-Bridge, that is able to create custom RSS feeds from anything, even YouTube channels! Happy exploring!
Link: https://nixnet.services/
Tip: Parler
Here's a nice reminder for you: Whenever you are searching for something within a social media platform, make sure that you also look outside of that platform. Because the location you are searching for the information might not be where you expect it to be...
Tip: While I was testing #parler I noticed a that a lot of parler posts/comments are being shared outside of parler on third party platforms. #osint #googlesearch #googledork pic.twitter.com/RHJqOS6KJ0
— Dutch Osint Guy Nico (@dutch_osintguy) November 22, 2020
Link to original tweet: https://twitter.com/dutch_osintguy/status/1330515656916262912
Have a good week and have a good search!
