Week in OSINT #2022-21
This week I have some interesting courses, articles, tips on tools and a huge collection of links!
It's amazing to see the sheer amount of information about open source information, collection and analysis has grown. Especially with the lockdowns of the last few years, I definitely see a growth of freely available information and courses, and I'm glad these are shared with the community. And the amount of tips I see being shared on Twitter, Discord and other platforms is awesome. It's great to be part of a group of collectors that re-share all this information on a regular basis.
- Geospatial Intelligence
- SOCMINT Scraping and Analysis
- Meta OSINT
- Exif Viewers
- Basic OSINT Investigations
Training: Geospatial Intelligence
Dr Dude shared some free course material on geospatial intelligence over on the TOCP Discord. They all cover the basics, history, methodology and how it can be used within different disciplines, but there's one completely free course by USGIF. It teaches you the workings of a GIS, different sensors in satellite imagery, and things like artificial intelligence and data analytics. Don't expect to be a GEOINT wizard after this, but you will absolutely learn everything there is about the history and basics of this field of expertise, to give you a solid basis for further exploring, with a whopping 358MB of PowerPoint presentations and Word documents for offline study.
Link: https://usgif.org/anthology/
Article: SOCMINT Scraping and Analysis
Laura shared a blog from OS2INT that is about basic data collection and analysis of social media platforms. It talks about Instant Data Scraper, the InVID/Weverify plugin, and a Python tool that is built to scrape Telegram messages from open groups and channels. A nice blog, with some good resources and explanation on how to gather and analyse data.
Link: https://os2int.com/toolbox/...
Links: Meta OSINT
Scott created an overview of over 4000 resources, tools, articles and blogs on open source intelligence. You can navigate by a nice interactive chart, or dive into the full list of sources grouped by categories. A huge list, with loads of resources, and an awesome job collecting it all. Thanks for sharing Scott!
Link: https://metaosint.github.io/
Tool: Exif Viewers
Since Jeffrey's Exif Viewer has been offline for some time, some people needed to go look for other solutions. On Twitter Kirby Plessas asked for some tips, and got some helpful replies, especially looking for solutions when you aren't able to install any local software, like Phil Harvey's ExifTool. Even tho it's probably the best local tool out there, there are some other possibilities.
Extensions and Add-ons
- InVID/WeVerify: Chrome extension
- EXIF Viewer Pro: Chrome extension
- Exif Viewer: Firefox add-on
Online Solutions
- Exifdata.com (Tip!)
- CyberChef recipe (bit buggy, doesn't always work)
- Forensically (use the 'Meta Data' option)
There are of course multiple extensions, add-ons or websites, but I simply can't add them all here. Do be weary that some browser extensions only show some basic information (like Exif Viewer Classic), unless you specify the exact fields you want to view.
A small word of warning, since I want to stress that you should always be careful using third party tools. Especially when you're trying to find metadata inside images, that may not be indexed by a search engine, or are somewhat sensitive. Because you don't know whether the other party saves them, or process them in some way you don't want to. In that case, I'd strongly recommend saving or emailing the images for later examination via a local tool.
Article: Basic OSINT Investigations
Earlier this month Sofia Santos wrote an article on the basic steps of an OSINT investigation, by using military transport as an example. She doesn't focus so much on the collection of data, what a lot of new people in the field see as OSINT. But in this article she uses already collected data to answer some parts of the 5 W's and 1H (link). A good introduction for people that just start, and stop after the collection of data.
Link: https://gralhix.wordpress.com/...
FUNINT: The Champs of Google Maps
Something light-hearted to close off today, an item by offtopicvideos about some cool Google Maps and geolocation things. Thanks for sharing Kris G!
Link: https://youtu.be/ZcKsQ5TJRYA
Blog: https://link.medium.com/y9mgBN5qqqb
Have a good week and have a good search!
