👋 Welcome to the 59th issue of The OSINT Newsletter. It’s been a while since the last issue and I wanted to thank you in advance for staying subscribed. I’ll spare you all the details on why the pause, just know that the newsletter IS BACK. There are a lot of exciting announcements to make, so let’s get right to it.
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Print issues of The OSINT Newsletter
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Black Hat Use Cases
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⚡ The OSINT Newsletter - Issue #58
Let’s get started. ⬇️
OSINT News
📰 Bellingcat’s Open Source Challenges
When you think geolocation, you think Bellingcat. Their team has put together a series of OSINT challenges to test your skills. Five days a week, for the entire month, find a new open source exercise.
Analyst Note: Geolocation is a skill that really benefits from experience. Sure, there are tools that may help you narrow down the globe to a specific region; however, when you watch someone like Rainbolt be able to tell you an image is in a village west of a town in East Asia in half a second with a 100m accuracy, that tool is his noggin. Reduce bottlenecks and get more efficient by getting experienced. Use these challenges to get you there.
Test Your Skills at Bellingcat
🎩 H/T: Bellingcat
📰 Centre for Information Resilience Relaunches their Website
The relaunch includes new maps, guides, and walkthroughs for OSINT investigators to hone your skills or brush up on areas that have gone stale. If you’re monitoring global conflicts, this is a must have in your bookmark list.
Analyst Note: With the rise of misinformation and disinformation on mainstream platforms, it’s very important to start with verified sources and expand from there. Too often people start with misinformation and have to overcome several biases before they’re willing to recognize their initial point of contact was completely false.
“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” ~ Mark Twain (probably)
🎩 H/T: Benjamin Strick, Centre for Information Resilience
OSINT Tools
🔎 Resolve a BlueSky Handle
BlueSky has seemingly had another resurgence. Initially, it was invite only and you had to beg a small group of people for an invite code. Then, when you got in, nothing was happening so you left.
It seems like it’s worth another look and many OSINT tools are popping up to investigate the platform. Internect will resolve a BlueSky handle and provide you some metadata not present in the browser. You’ll get a unique ID and some location-based information which can be helpful when connecting accounts or validating external information.
Analyst Note: The server location may give you a hint to where the individual is located; however do not trust it. Someone could have registered with a different IP or spoofed it in another way. Validate it with other information.
🎩 H/T: Henri Beek (Discovery)
🔎 Captagon Trade Project
What is Captagon? It’s a highly addictive drug mass-produced notably in Syria but also in that entire region and beyond. It’s a synthetic stimulant with fenethylline in it. It’s been banned in several countries due to every reason you can imagine.
The New Lines Institute has been tracking this drug for a while and has developed a tool to track, research, and understand the captagon trade.
Analyst Note: If you work in counter-narcotics or an adjacent field (law enforcement in any way), this is something to get familiar with. I’m not an expert in this field but if you’re interested in learning more, I recommend reading the Drug Intelligence Bulletin to stay up to date with what’s happening in this space.
🎩 H/T: Caroline Rose, Open Syr
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Since BlueSky is in the latest hotness, let’s take a deep dive under the hood and see what publicly available information we can analyze for OSINT that isn’t available in the web app.
⚡ Going Beyond the Browser User Interface of BlueSky
Learn how to gather information from BlueSky that goes far beyond what’s possible in the UI including
Higher limit search queries (top posts, latest posts, people, feeds)
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