OSINT

OSINT, a word which has some hidden meanings in it, kinda abbreviation, isn’t it?
Before exploring the topic, why don’t we explore the word first?
Let’s move on to it…
OSINT which stands for Open Source INTelligence refers to gathering information about a victim from Open Sources. But there’s a question clicking in my mind that “What are these open sources?”

Let’s explore that too…

Open sources include:

1. Google and Yahoo services
2. Meta and it’s services, LinkedIn and other sites
3. Target organisation’s website
4. Blogs, News groups, Press releases
5. Network sniffing and much more

We extract the required information about our target from these open sources. But don’t you think it can cost you a lot of time?

Yeah, i got you buddy!
We got a number of automatic tools to cover that up for you in millionth part of a second. Just a click and boom! You got those required informations.
Ahh! I can see your cravings to know those tools.
Don’t worry, what are we here for!
We got your back!

Here are a list of tools which can be beneficial for you if you are going to do OSINT on your Target.
Let’s focus on those tools first which comes along Kali Linux.

1. Recon-ng: Recon-ng is a powerful tool for open-source intelligence gathering. It’s a full-featured web reconnaissance framework that provides a wide range of modules for different tasks, from information gathering to reporting.
2. Maltego: Maltego is a commercial tool, but Kali Linux provides a free version of it. It’s known for its excellent capabilities in data mining and information visualization. Maltego helps you map out relationships between various pieces of data.
3. theHarvester: theHarvester is a command-line tool for gathering email addresses, subdomains, hosts, employee names, and more from various public sources. It’s a handy tool for information enumeration.
4. Shodan: While not exclusive to Kali Linux, Shodan is a search engine designed to find specific types of internet-connected devices. You can use it to discover exposed devices and services.
5. SpiderFoot: SpiderFoot is an open-source OSINT automation tool. It automates the process of collecting information from different sources and provides a clear report on the results.
6. Metagoofil: Metagoofil is a tool for extracting metadata from public documents, such as PDF files and Microsoft Office documents. It’s useful for gathering information that may not be apparent at first glance.
7. Sn0int: Sn0int is an open-source OSINT framework that allows you to automate information gathering and enrichment. It supports various plugins for different data sources.
8. Photon: Photon is a web crawling and OSINT tool that can be used for gathering URLs, parameters, and other data from websites. It’s useful for recon on web applications.

Now the other tools and categories for OSINT may count in as…

1. Search Engines:
   • Google
   • Bing
   • DuckDuckGo
   • Yandex

2. Social Media:
   • Twitter Advanced Search
   • Facebook Graph Search (Note: This may have limited functionality due to privacy settings)
   • LinkedIn
   • Instagram
   • TikTok
   • Reddit
3. Website Analysis:
   • WHOIS Lookup (for domain registration information)
   • Archive.org (for viewing historical website content)
   • BuiltWith (identifies technology used on websites)

4. Data Aggregation:
   • Spokeo (for people search)
   • Pipl (for people search)

5. Data Mining and Scraping:
   • Scrapy (a Python framework for web scraping)
   • Import.io (web data extraction tool)
   • Octoparse (web scraping software)

6. Public Records:
   • Publicly available government databases and records
   • Court records
   • Business registries

7. DNS and IP Tools:
   • NSLookup
   • IP Geolocation databases
   • DNS Enumeration tools like DNSDumpster

8. Image and Video Analysis:
   • Google Reverse Image Search
   • TinEye (reverse image search)
   • YouTube Data Tools

9. Geospatial Data:
   • Google Earth
   • Google Maps
   • Open Street Map

A lot of tools has been discussed above to automate your OSINT process. If you don’t get the informations of your choice, try using OSINT frameworks, E-mail and phone number look-ups and all.
You will have what were you searching for mate.

That’s all for today’s blog!
Keep hacking! Keep learning!

Thank you.