Week in OSINT #2024-05
Another short update from the OSINT community, with some news about recent changes, privacy and another challenge by Sophia!
The social media landscape is constantly changing, as are the tools we have to our disposal. That is why I always recommend people not to rely solely on tools, but understand the techniques and workflow involved. Tools can be helpful to discover new paths, or uncover information you may have missed, but most tools can and will break eventually. In this episode, there are two things that might affect some people's ability to find information on Google and X/Twitter:
- Google Cache
- Nitter
- Privacy & InfoSec
- Sofia's Challenge
News: Google Cache
The news about Google removing the "cache" option in search results has been shared all over the place last week: Google Cache is going to be retired! The option to view a cached page has already been removed in the search results. And even though, for now, it is possible to view cached results by opening a website with the cache:, but that too will be removed in the future. And so the only way to find older pages in the future, will be to use dedicated archive sites. Thank you Polianalytical [ ] for notifying me!
Link: https://www.theverge.com/2024/...
Link: https://www.seroundtable.com/...
News: Nitter
And in other 'bad' news, Nitter is no longer either. In a comment on GitHub, the founder zedeus literally said: Nitter is dead. The SSL certificate has expired, but that is not the reason for the problems. They seemed to have been using an old feature that used "guest accounts" to retrieve information, but X/Twitter has removed that according to this message. That also means, that in the near future pretty much all Nitter instances will be useless. In case you do want to check content on X without having an account, there is still the option of Sotwe! But just as with Nitter, I do want to stress that this an external source that you might be using. So think about that, before
Link: https://www.sotwe.com
Links: Privacy & InfoSec
GingerT [ ] has been very busy lately, and added a bunch of resources to his GitHub repo. If you have never checked his repositories over on GitHub before, I do recommend having a look. In this repo, he shares links, products and tools that help you understand or protect your privacy online. Just like the rest of his GitHub content, it is a treasure trove of links to tips, sites and more.
Link: https://github.com/cqcore/...
Training: Sofia's Challenge
At the end of January, Sofia Santos [ ] posted a new OSINT challenge! This one is rated easy, and I do have to say that finding the specific moment in the video mentioned, was more difficult than finding the answer, haha! But nonetheless, these small little training exercises are great for anyone! So no matter what your skill level is, I do recommend checking out Sophia's list of 'OSINT Exercises' over on her website!
Challenge: https://gralhix.com/osint-exercise-023/
List: https://gralhix.com/list-of-osint-exercises/
FUNINT: This Week's Meme(s)
Well, I think the following meme wraps up this week's episode nicely, looking at Google. But why not two memes for the price of... Well, nothing? Yes, I am in a generous mood today
I created the meme above for this episode, but I had another one that I created some months ago. And it was so fitting, looking at the news about Nitter, I decided to share that one too:
Have a good week and have a good search!
