Open Source Intelligence Archives

OSINT Research: The Devil’s in the Details

For those unfamiliar with the term OSINT Research, it is explained this way by Wikipedia

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of information that is gathered from public, or open, sources.^[2] OSINT is primarily used in national security, law enforcement, and business intelligence functions and is of value to analysts who use non-sensitive intelligence in answering classified, unclassified, or proprietary intelligence requirements across the previous intelligence disciplines.

OSINT sources can be divided up into six different categories of information flow

Media, print newspapers, magazines, radio, and television from across and between countries.
Internet, online publications, blogs, discussion groups, citizen media (i.e. – cell phone videos, and user created content), YouTube, and other social media websites (i.e. – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.). This source also outpaces a variety of other sources due to its timeliness and ease of access.
Public Government Data, public government reports, budgets, hearings, telephone directories, press conferences, websites, and speeches. Although this source comes from an official source they are publicly accessible and may be used openly and freely.
Professional and Academic Publications, information acquired from journals, conferences, symposia, academic papers, dissertations, and theses.
Commercial Data, commercial imagery, financial and industrial assessments, and databases.
Grey literature, technical reports, preprints, patents, working papers, business documents, unpublished works, and newsletters.

OSINT Resources Reveal the Details From the Deep Web

Many times our clients want to better understand the difference between a social media scan and a deep web scan. Taking a close look at the image above explains a lot and kind of surprises most people in terms of the data on the web that is openly available.

eChatter Case Study Examples of Deep Web Details

Recently, we were trying to find out whether a POI (person of interest) was married. He had no Facebook clues other than he was in a relationship. After conducting a deep web scan we found a local newspaper article in which he was named along with “his wife”. The wife chose to keep her maiden name.
A deep scan was ordered by a client to determine what happened to a deceased person’s body. We found an association letter that was published online indicating the person was cremated and buried at sea.
A client needed to know if their POI had any business affiliations that wasn’t disclosed in a divorce settlement. After a deep scan was conducted, we located quite a few businesses tied to the POI.

Does it always work out this way? Not at all. Mainly because some people are much better at hiding this than others or because they were advised to delete everything online by advice of counsel. However, these are the kind of details OSINT research is all about. You will not find this in a Google search.

How to Manually Get to Deep Web Content

In a recent article , the deep web was clarified – what it is, what it’s not, and why it can be useful. The question that always comes up is, “How can we access it?”

In part, you are accessing it each time you do a Google search – you’re just not going back far enough through the search results. Outside of spending hours weeding through page 25 of a search result, how can deep web searches be more efficient?

1. Google may be a household name, but it’s not the only game in town. Most people rely on Google to be their online search companion. Of course Google is the major player – after all, it’s become more than a search engine – it’s a verb. Don’t forget about the other search engines, namely Bing and Yahoo. While they may be considered the red-headed stepchildren, they can still be helpful. Like software platforms, each of the major search engines has its own algorigthm, which in turn may produce different results. What Google things is unimportant may be significant to Yahoo or Bing, or vice versa. Search using a variety of major search engines to find the most content available.

2. YouTube isn’t just for music anymore. From music to how to videos to families sharing cute kid videos, YouTube has become almost as popular of a search engine as Google. Don’t forget to run searches in YouTube as well.

3. Don’t start at the beginning. When running a general search using Google, Bing, or Yahoo, start at page 3, maybe 4. Don’t start with the first page. Those are the surface web results that you can easily look at later. To get to the deeper content, you’ll need to start on a later page. You will start to find more irrelevant results on these later pages too – don’t let that deter you; within those false positives can be some great information to help in your research efforts.

4. Use more than a name. Don’t just search a person’s name or their name with a city and/or state – search using known user names the person created for social accounts, nicknames, phone numbers, addresses, the person’s name and a family member’s name, you get the idea. Set up searches that use more specific information and you may find more information this way.

5. Learn how to search using Boolean. While you’ve likely heard the term and you’re only knowledge of Boolean search is what most of us think of – using AND, OR, or quotes in your search – there is so much more to it. Setting up specific searches in a certain way can bring those deep web results to the surface. We recommend taking a look at the sites below as a guide to learning how to use Boolean searching to your benefit.

https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/

https://www.talkwalker.com/blog/how-boolean-search-operators-make-searching-a-piece-of-cake

Knowing how to search efficiently can help you dive into the deep web and find what you might be looking for. It’s not a scary place, like the dark web, and shouldn’t be confused with that. It’s just a matter of having patience and knowing how to search to access this type of information.

Corporate Use of Open Source Intelligence

Corporate responsibility and risk management for any corporation goes well beyond what happens within the walls of everyday business. A very overlooked practice for companies of all sizes is digital research on their unique business and industry. With the rise of user generated content and social media, reputation management takes on an entirely new level in 2018. In comes OSINT, or, Open Source Intelligence (the collection and analysis of publicly available data in an intelligence context).

Frank Figliuzzi, Chief Operating Officer of ETS Risk Management, Inc., which consults with global clients on intelligence analysis, insider threat, and investigations puts it this way:

“Increasingly, security leaders systematically incorporate OSINT analysis from proven experts not only to get results, but because it is has become the new professional standard in the industry.”

Of course with the EU Privacy law in effect, hiring an expert in this area is key to be sure your firm is in compliance. With the digital universe doubling in size every two years, the time is now to be sure your business has a plan in place. Archiving and preserving your own online data may be beneficial down the road as well. Lawsuits pop up all the time, and having this data collection secured may help your case. In fact, many corporate attorneys are now insisting on this type of data capture for their clients.

Pew Research updated the stats on the U.S. consumption of social media sites online or on their cellphone.