Week in OSINT #2019-47
Another week has flown by way too fast! Busy with talks, some digging into resources and of course this weekly newsletter!
It doesn’t seem a lot of links this week, but there are some nice articles in here that are absolutely worth reading and that will absorb enough of your time! So enjoy the small overview of week 47:
- Apple Maps
- Nixintel on Spiderfoot
- Telegram VKBot
- Foursquare
- Exportcomments
Tip: Apple Maps
Tip: if you don’t own a Apple device and still want to use Apple maps for geo #osint research, DuckDuckGo loads Apple Maps by default. https://t.co/sOMan4BMyL
— Dutch Osint Guy Nico (@dutch_osintguy) November 20, 2019
Last week dutch_osintguy tweeted a nifty little trick to open Apple Maps from within DuckDuckGo. So if you prefer that map layout over others, this is something you should definitely have a look at.
If you want even more maps, I can suggest the Chrome extension ‘Map Switcher’ or the Firefox plugin ‘OpenSwitchMaps’, with both well over 20 different maps you can switch to with a single click of a button.
Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/map-switcher/fanpjcbgdinjeknjikpfnldfpnnpkelb?hl=en
Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/openswitchmaps/?src=search
Artcile: Nixintel on Spiderfoot
A few days ago Nixintel shared another article with the community. This time it wasn’t about geolocation for a change, but about Spiderfoot HX. He walks us through an investigation dealing with an IP address that generated some suspicious traffic.
Link: https://nixintel.info/osint-tools/using-spiderfoot-hx-to-investigate-a-malicious-ip-address/
Tip: Telegram VKBot
I was browsing around a bit on GitHub looking for some new ideas and unexplored tools. And that’s when I stumbled upon a simple but useful Telegram bot. It can retrieve the (public) information of any VK account, and all it needs is a username or VK id. Of course one can simply visit a URL like ‘vk.com/id1234567’ or even ‘vk.com/UserId’, but in the weird scenario you don’t want to directly touch VK and don’t have your VPN ready, it’s always something nice and gimmicky to have around.
Link: https://telegram.me/VKUserInfo_bot
Article: Foursquare
The article starts that Foursquare seems to be a overlooked area for OSINT research. I don’t think that’s entirely true, but it is a fact that not a lot has been written about it. And that is why I simply need to share this awesome blog by osintcombine. Some easy steps to gather more information on people, but also some more technical depth in regards to retrieving structured data for further analysis.
Link: https://www.osintcombine.com/post/foursquare-the-hidden-osint-gem
Site: Exportcomments
Not too long ago TikTok closed off the publicly availability of comments. Some people immediately dive into debugging mode and start kicking at an API […] and some people pay attention to the awesome podcast of Michael Bazzell. So thanks to the ever watching eye (and ear) of salaheldinaz, here is ‘Exportcomments’. A site that can extract comments from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok or Vimeo amongst some other handy things.
Link: https://exportcomments.com/
Have a good week and have a good search!
