The OSINT Newsletter - Issue #40
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👋 Welcome to the 40th issue of The OSINT Newsletter. This issue contains OSINT news, community posts, tactics, techniques, and tools to help you become a better investigator. My goal with this newsletter is to help promote the OSINT industry, develop better investigators, and raise awareness of ethical use cases for open source intelligence.
🚨 The first test copy of the print version of The OSINT Newsletter came in last Wednesday. I’ve spent some time editing and reformatting to improve the readability and made some adjustments to the materials based on feedback.
I’m excited to announce that the print version is no longer on pre-order! I ordered the first batch of issues on Friday and they’ll arrive in February. From there, I’ll ship them to all of the pre-order customers first, followed by new customers starting today.
🪃 If you missed the last newsletter, here’s a link to catch up.
⚡ Extracting profile information, downloading user content, and parsing followers and followings at scale from BlueSky
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OSINT News
📰 Each Facebook User is Monitored by Thousands of Companies
A study conducted by Consumer Reports with 709 volunteers, found that each participant's data was shared with Facebook by an average of 2,230 companies, with some users' data being shared by over 7,000 companies.
🎩 H/T: Jon Keegan
📰 Think Deepfakes Are Bad? ‘Cheapfakes’ Are Far More Dangerous
The Daily Beast shines a light on the overlooked menace of 'cheapfakes.' Unlike high-tech deepfakes, these easily produced, low-cost manipulated media are rapidly weaponized in misinformation campaigns, proving especially disruptive in conflict zones like the Israel-Hamas skirmish.
🎩 H/T: Josh Axelrod
📰 Identifying Small Drones from Screenshots and Displays
Faine shows you how you can determine what make and model of drone is used in images that surface online. Using the display that appears on drone footage, you can assess whether it’s a DJI model or something else, for example.
H/T: Faine Greenwood
OSINT Community
📺 Cryptocurrency & NFT OSINT: Introduction to Web3:Ethereum profiling & deanonymization
Patrick shows you how to get started with open source intelligence in the context of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFTs. He goes through tools, tactics, techniques, and case studies.
🎩 H/T: Patrick Vent
🐦 TweetFeed is back!
With changes to Twitter’s API, TweetFeed, an open source project for tracking conversations on X, was significantly nerfed. Fortunately, Daniel was able to get TweetFeed back online, giving you a valuable tool for free cyber threat intelligence.
🎩 H/T: Daniel Lopez
🐦 GHunt v2.1.0 is available
A major update to GHunt, one of the most prolific open source reverse email tools, was announced. Cookies aren’t required anymore and mxrch fixed a lot of login issues.
🎩 H/T: mxrch
OSINT Tools
🌟 Sponsor: Authentic8
OSINTUp: a virtual skill-sharing event
Thursday, Feb. 22, join OSINT experts like Micah Hoffman of MyOSINT.Training and Cynthia Hetherington of OSMOSISCon for a day of FREE, virtual tips and resources to further your open-source tradecraft.
🔎 Taranis
Taranis is an ambitious project. It seems like they’re trying to do a lot at once. However, if you’re looking for an open source case management tool that leverages a lot of AI and machine learning to surface insights about your case, give this a look.
🖥️ Tor Taxi
Similar to dark.fail, Tor Taxi gives you a directory of Onion URLs and shows the status of each site. From markets to online services, monitor up time and down time, and find new resources for investigations.
🖥️ Fingerprinter
GONZO has been doing a lot of research lately into online fingerprinting. If you’re not familiar, when you browse online your device leaves a unique fingerprint that can be obfuscated using several methods if you choose; however, some data points are very difficult to spoof. Use this tool to see what information you expose to the internet.
🎩 H/T: GONZO
✅ That’s it for the free version of The OSINT Newsletter. Consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support this publication and independent research.
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