The OSINT Newsletter - Issue #96
Organizing Information and Avoiding Duplication of Effort
👋 Welcome to the 96th 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.
🪃 If you missed the last newsletter, here’s a link to catch up.
⚡ Geolocation, Geolocation, Geolocation: OSINT and Location Analysis
Let’s get started. ⬇️
OSINT News
📰 The State of Online Search: How to Find What You’re Looking For in the Age of AI
Craig talks about changes to the YouTube search functionality, among other things, and how the emergence of AI-first feature functionality will change how we find content online, making many old methods obsolete.
🎩 H/T: Craig Silverman
📰 Identifying ‘Less-Lethal’ Weapons Used By DHS Agents in US Immigration Raids and Protests
Visual recognition is a cornerstone skill set for any intelligence professional. The ability to quickly analyze an image and draw upon your experience to quickly identify an object, person, or location is the difference between a novice and a legend. Trevor gives you a crash course on identifying “less-lethal” weapons.
🎩 H/T: Trevor Ball
📰 The #1 Downloaded Skill on OpenClaw was Malware!
OpenClaw is still making its rounds online and it’s worth mentioning again. What we’re witnessing might be the “MySpace” of LLMs, opening the door for more sophisticated versions later. Much like early social media, it’s filled with scams, like concealing malware inside the OpenClaw skill marketplace.
🎩 H/T: chiefofautism
OSINT Tools
🔎 OSINT Entity Extractor
OSINT Entity Extractor is a Obsidian plugin that allows you to leverage your OpenAI API key to extract insights from content found online with ease, creating a nice visualization of key data points.
🎩 H/T: thomasjjj
🔎 p3Wifi
If you’ve ever used Wigle but feel like it’s too much of a blast from the past, check out p3Wifi. Similar, but modern.
🔎 ThunderBit
If Instant Data Scraper is coming up short for you, consider ThunderBit. It’s like ChatGPT and Instant Data Scraper in a tag team match up, but it’s in your web browser as a Chrome Extension.
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🏁 New CTF Challenge Live - The Unknown Bridge
A new CTF challenge has been posted on our CTF website. This week’s CTF challenge focuses on identifying the full name of a bridge seen in the background of a flying U.S. Navy UAV.
Start competing in our Capture the Flag (CTF)
🪃 If you missed the last CTF, here’s a link to catch up.
Last week’s CTF challenge featured an image reverse lookup OSINT task titled “Locating Epstein”.
By closely examining the wall behind the subject, we could take a screenshot of the window area and run it through PicDetective which then pointed us to the Great Wall of China.
Additional visual clues were also present, such as Chinese writing visible on the wall, which also indicated that the location was in China.
The task tested participants OSINT skills, particularly their ability to perform image reverse lookups, analyze subtle visual clues, and leverage the appropriate tools to identify the location accurately.
✅ 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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⚡ Organizing Information and Avoiding Duplication of Effort
When doing an investigation, you can very easily retrace your steps accidentally and waste a lot of time. In this issue, I will step through my method for collecting and organizing information and improving efficiency.
This issue includes a free browser extension for improving investigative efficiency as well as a free Obsidian plugin for basic case management.
👀 All paid posts in the archive. Go back and see what you’ve missed!
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