The OSINT Curious Project

Latest Episodes:

Episode 48: Keyword search on Instagram, Scraping Fleets, OSINTDojo, AI-generated photos, Parler searching Dec 05, 2020

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People in this Episode

Micah Hoffman (@WebBreacher)
Nico Dekens (@dutch_osintguy)
Ritu Gill (@OSINTTechniques)

Links to what we discussed

Nico is tracking all black friday / cyber monday related deals for you: https://github.com/Dutchosintguy/Blackfriday-Deals-2020
Interesting Twitter thread on Arabic clothing that might be useful in some OSINT investigations: https://twitter.com/AD_GQ/status/1331092825858076673
Nico’s tip on how to search for Parler content without accessing Parler: https://twitter.com/dutch_osintguy/status/1330515656916262912
Keyword search is coming to Instagram! More info here: https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/11/17/21570475/instagram-keyword-search-update-hashtag-account?__twitter_impression=true
YouTube-DI is back on GitHub: https://github.blog/2020-11-16-standing-up-for-developers-youtube-dl-is-back/
Practice your verification skills with First Draft News’s new interactive quizzes: https://ftp.firstdraftnews.org/articulate/temp/ovcR/story_html5.html
Need some AI generated faces? Check out this massive archive but keep in mind they’re easily recognisable: https://generated.photos/faces
Great Twitter thread on scraping Fleets without triggering the ‘read’ notification: https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1329935540049817600
Great resource for international geolocation and winning the GeoGuessr.com game: https://geotips.net/
There’s a new OSINT project, called OSINTDojo that you might want to check out: https://www.osintdojo.com/
Wanna view all tweets from one account? Then check out this tool: https://nitter.net/
Protect your identity by creating an AI-generated photo of yourself: https://generated.photos/anonymizer#

Self Promotion

Ritu will be teaching the SANS SEC487 OSINT course with Micah in December. Look at https://www.sans.org/event/cyber-defense-initiative-2020-live-online/course/open-source-intelligence-gathering for details.
Nico will also be on the https://zolder.io/category/zoldersessions/.

Episode 47: Samuel Lolagar (OSINTGeek), FireEye VM, Dark Web, Parler, ETags, a bit of SIGINT and collecting info from Youtube videos Dec 05, 2020

Show notes

Today’s special guest is Samuel Lolagar @osintgeek

Samuel’s website: https://osintgeek.de

People in this Episode

Micah Hoffman (@WebBreacher)
Matthias Wilson (@MwOsint)
Steven Harris (@nixintel)
John TerBush (@thegumshoo)
Nico Dekens (@dutch_osintguy)
Lisette (@technisette)

Links to what we discussed

Here’s a new VM from FireEye for threat intel/research: https://github.com/fireeye/ThreatPursuit-VM
Check out OSINTCombine’s new blog post on dark web OSINT: https://twitter.com/osintcombine/status/1326329875037216768
If you want to know more about Parler and what info you can find: https://twitter.com/firstdraftnews/status/1326973035207921667
Case study of how to verify and geolocate images: https://mxsx.eu/2020/11/13/Wakashio.html
How to use ETags (part of the HTTP response) in OSINT investigations: https://medium.com/@catalyst256/osint-etag-youre-it-ecd7e923392c
Article about militias, their radio gears and channel frequencies utilised by them: https://radiofreeq.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/militia-radio-frequencies/
Tool to collect valuable info from YouTube videos: https://tools.digitalmethods.net/netvizz/youtube/
Lorand’s new blog post explains how to construct powerful search queries: https://www.lorandbodo.com/blog/constructing-searchqueries-osint
Curated dark web resources for OSINT by MidaSearch: https://midasearch.org/dark-web/
Thoughts about sockpuppet accounts for OSINT: https://www.aaroncti.com/lets-talk-about-sockpuppet-accounts/

Self Promotion

Matthias and Samuel are preparing for the German OSINT conference. More info here: https://gosintcon.de
Micah and John are co-chairs of the SANS OSINT Summit, a free 2-day OSINT conference in February 2021 (https://www.sans.org/event/osint-summit-2021/) and are looking for presenters and attendees!
DutchOSINTGuy is proud of his SANS SEC537 Practical OSINT Class (https://www.sans.org/cyber-security-courses/practical-osint-analysis-and-automation/). Registration is open for those classes at significant discount.

Episode 46: Guest Amine Ghoulidi, resources on mis- and disinformation, investigating international phone numbers, Geolocation 10-minute tip and much more! Nov 08, 2020

Show notes

Today’s special guest

Amine (@aityaakub)

People in this Episode

Micah Hoffman (@WebBreacher)
Matthias Wilson (@mwosint)
Lorand Bodo (@LorandBodo)
Steven Harris (@nixintel)
John TerBush (@thegumshoo)

Links to what we discussed

TOCP Resource List: https://bit.ly/osintcuriousresources
What to do when a Facebook profile is private? https://osintcurio.us/2020/10/19/what-to-do-when-a-facebook-profile-is-private/
10 Minute Tip on geolocation – part I: https://osintcurio.us/2020/11/01/ten-minute-tip-image-geolocation-part-1/
Bellingcat’s OSINT tools: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18rtqh8EG2q1xBo2cLNyhIDuK9jrPGwYr9DI2UncoqJQ/edit
Resources on mis/disinformation: https://mediamanipulation.org
Training session on how to verify images/videos by Jane Lytvynenko: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aMk48O3vpM&feature=youtu.be
Geolocating Kim Kardashian: https://vickymochama.medium.com/how-dare-you-kim-kardashians-40th-birthday-an-investigation-766dc879eb23
Guide on how to use Optical Character Recognition: https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/24/screentranslator-is-an-open-source-tool-that-can-translate-text-from-images/
Finding connections between entities based on text: https://jantegze.medium.com/how-to-find-out-who-owns-my-data-d0c7984ae20f
Investigate international phone numbers: https://www.secjuice.com/phone-numbers-investigation-the-open-source-way/
RIAA GitHub projects for downloading YouTube videos https://www.zdnet.com/article/riaa-blitz-takes-down-18-github-projects-used-for-downloading-youtube-videos/
Lorand’s blog on how to search social media: https://www.lorandbodo.com/blog/social-media-search-strategies
Christina Letaki & OSINTGeek’s blog on combining intelligence disciplines: https://osintgeek.de/fcihi/blog/index.html
and much more!

Episode 45: Q&A with the audience, lifting fingerprints from fotos, CONINT, understanding time stamps on social media, Google IDs and more Oct 23, 2020

Show notes

People in this Episode

Micah Hoffman (@WebBreacher)
Matthias Wilson (@mw_Osint)
Lorand Bodo (@LorandBodo)
Technisette
Sector035
Ritu Gill (@OSINTTechniques)
John TerBush (@thegumshoo)

Links to what we discussed

App usage by country: https://www.applyzer.com/?mmenu=worldcharts
Top sites worldwide: https://www.alexa.com/topsites
OSINT technique to find Start.me page: https://twitter.com/OSINTtechniques/status/1316937466222465024
Download Win7, 8.1 and 10 (90 day trial) VM’s: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ & https://web.archive.org/web/20191226134552/https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/
Sinwindie’s attack surface for the dark web: https://twitter.com/sinwindie/status/1315082663384899584
Lifting fingerprints from photos: https://twitter.com/BenDoBrown/status/1317544626425913351
Lorand Bodo’s new website & blog: https://lorandbodo.com
RSS feeds for Subreddits: https://twitter.com/LorandBodo/status/1314548615071834112
Download CONINT presentations here: https://conint.io/2020downloads
Understanding time stamps on social media: https://twitter.com/firstdraftnews/status/1314007636036259842
Update on WeVerify: https://twitter.com/WeVerify/status/1317548452784578561
Data scraping with Google Sheets: https://tompatrickjarvis.medium.com/data-scraping-with-google-sheets-to-assist-journalism-and-osint-tutorial-4f490d0dd5c4
Blog post on pivoting and researching info: https://keyfindings.blog/2020/10/16/where-is-leonardos-car-using-osint-to-trace-vehicles/
Retrieve info about Google account &activity: https://tools.epieos.com/google-account.php
Keeping grid on Google IDs: https://sector035.nl/articles/keeping-a-grip-on-google-ids
and much more!

Episode 44: Guest Julia Bayer, Geolocating without Street View and Google Maps, SOCMINT on foreign social media, FOCA for OSINT, DNS research Oct 05, 2020

Show notes

This week’s guest is Julia Bayer (@bayer_julia)

Julia Bayer is an investigative journalist, innovation manager and trainer at Deutsche Welle. At DW´s Investigative unit she is diving deep online collecting publicly available sources to uncover the (in)visible using OSINT. Before that she researched and verified UGC for (breaking) news at DW´s Social Media Newsroom.

People in this Episode

Nico Dekens (@DutchOSINTGuy)
Matthias Wilson (@mwOsint)
Lorand Bodo (@LorandBodo)
Nixintel (@nixintel)
Sector035 (@sector035)
Rae Baker (@wondersmith_rae)

Links to what we discussed

OSINTCurious blog post by Technisette: https://osintcurio.us/2020/09/28/when-there-is-no-google-earth-or-street-view-what-can-you-do/
Blog by Matthias Wilson: SOCMINT on foreign platforms: https://keyfindings.blog/2020/10/04/social-media-around-the-world/
Updated browser extension by OSINTSupport: https://osint.support/chrome-extensions/2019/09/29/osint-socmint-tooling.html
Google dorks to access confidential information: https://benjaminstrick.com/dear-x-your-staff-passwords-numbers-and-confidential-data-is-on-google/
Blog post by Nixintel: https://nixintel.info/osint/do-dns-records-prove-that-jim-watkins-is-q/
Blog post by Rae Baker: https://medium.com/@raebaker/using-foca-for-osint-document-metadata-analysis-6745c8d709fa
Search for emojis: https://www.fastemoji.com/
Update by Telegram: https://twitter.com/LorandBodo/status/1311591571498971136
2020 OSINT tools & resources handbook by @i_intelligence: https://i-intelligence.eu/resources/osint-toolkit
FREE online investigative training course for journalists: https://twitter.com/KnightCenterUT/status/1312508586216497153
Create your own bookmarks database: https://www.aware-online.com/en/create-your-own-osint-database-with-bookmarks/
Thread on how to investigate websites: https://twitter.com/aware_online/status/1308312883248467975
How discover relationships between websites using Maltego: https://www.maltego.com/blog/tracing-internet-relationships-with-maltego/

Episode 43: Guest Emmanuelle Welch, Maltego for Telegram, Google Account Finder, WIPO Database, Twitter Analysis Framework Oct 05, 2020

Show notes

This week’s guest is Emmanuelle Welch (@frenchpi)

Emmanuelle Welch is a Licensed Private Investigator, Certified Fraud Examiner, and owner of French Connection Research, a private investigative agency in Brooklyn, NY, licensed in New York and Washington, DC. She specializes in white-collar crime investigations, cross-Atlantic litigation support and OSINT analysis.

People in this Episode

Nico Dekens (@DutchOSINTGuy)
Lorand Bodo (@LorandBodo)
Nixintel (@nixintel)
Kirby Plessas (@kirbstr)
John (@thegumshoo)
Rae Baker (@wondersmith_rae)

Links to what we discussed

Emmanuelle’s OSINT tools/resources start.me page for dating apps: https://start.me/p/VRxaj5/dating-apps-and-hook-up-sites-for-investigators
Introduction to researching foreign influence in the US: https://osintcurio.us/2020/09/14/introduction-to-researching-foreign-influence-in-the-us/
NEW Twitter Analysis framework by @sowdust: https://github.com/sowdust/tafferugli
OSINT Intelligence Cycle by @sinwindie: https://www.secjuice.com/the-osint-intelligence-cycle-part-i-planning-and-direction/
Maltego Transform for Telegram: https://twitter.com/noneprivacy/status/1304357985297346560?s=21
Using R to find stories in financial publicly available data: https://medium.com/@itoufexi/how-i-used-the-companies-house-streaming-api-to-find-a-newsworthy-story-a96d787955b2
How hackers can find sensitive information in your photos: https://medium.com/digital-marketing-lab/subtle-information-hackers-find-in-the-background-of-your-social-media-photos-938ec1876246
Interesting and detailed case study about what can be found with someone’s passport number: https://mango.pdf.zone/finding-former-australian-prime-minister-tony-abbotts-passport-number-on-instagram
Google Account Finder: https://tools.epieos.com/google-account.php
Best investigative podcasts: https://gijn.org/2020/09/09/a-global-tour-of-top-investigative-podcasts-the-2020-edition/
Call for proposals for ConINT (@conint)_io: https://twitter.com/CONINT_io/status/1306676769718706181
Database of industrial designs data: https://twitter.com/navlys_/status/1306333649877504000
How to use industrial designs data for OSINT: https://keyfindings.blog/2020/05/03/using-the-wipo-ip-portal-for-osint/

Episode 42: New Facebook design, creating sock puppets, Redditor, OSINT on Telegram, WhatsMyName Update Sep 07, 2020

Show notes

Welcome back!

We are back with a brand new episode after our one-month summer break! In this week’s episode, we catch up with the latest OSINT news, as usual!

People in this Episode

Micah Hoffman (@webbreacher)
Nico Dekens (@Dutch_osintguy)
Lorand Bodo (@LorandBodo)
Sector035 (@Sector035)
Technisette (@technisette)
Rae Baker (@wondersmith_rae)

What we discussed

A big thank you to all our sponsors and Patreon patrons who have been supporting us!
Learn how to create a sock puppet account for your OSINT investigations here
Learn about the main differences between the old and new Facebook design here
Check out this new OSINT tool, called Redditor. It’s similar to Tweetdeck but just for Reddit
Need some new OSINT resources? Then check out this amazing collection
Dutch's talk about leveraging Telegram for OSINT purposes
Sinwindie’s attack surface for Twitter. For similar flow charts, click here
Interested in detecting deep fakes? Microsoft has launched a new tool to detect them
Here’s a great thread about some of the most popular dark net markets. Get free and daily updates about new dark net sites
Update about PimEye – a facial search engine
Wanna track ‘dictators’? Check out this website that tracks aircraft associated with specific countries
New updates for SentinelHub
Also new updates for WhatsMyName – a username search engine developed by Micah in collaboration with OSINTCombine and many others.
Search for 393+ million US court records on JudyRecords
Practice OSINT and work on real cases. Tracelabs has announced monthly OSINT Search Party CTFs!

Self Promotion

Micah will be at the OSINT Symposium in Australia and OSMOSISCon in October
Rae will be presenting at the Bsides conference in Copenhagen on 18/19 September
Lisette will be presenting at OSMOSISCon in October – check out her new website too

Episode 41: Special Guest Ines Narciso, video search tool Peteyvid, estimating crowd sizes, and more on facial recognition (even for dogs) Jul 28, 2020

Show notes

Special Guest

Inês Narciso (@IWN_LX) – Ines worked in the Portuguese Intelligence Service for 12 years. She started up doing OSINT in 2008 and later became an OSINT and online undercover operations project manager. In 2019, she joined Iscte Iul a Lisbon University where she teaches Digital Methods and conducts research on disinformation. Since then, she’s also built a company that uses OSINT to find people’s ancestors and build family trees. In her spare time, she also helps pro bono fellow journalists in Portugal and abroad in their investigations and women who have been a victim of revenge porn or intimate image abuse.

People in this Episode

Micah Hoffman (@webbreacher)
Nico (@DutchOSINTGuy)
Matthias Wilson (@mwosint)
Nixintel
Lorand Bodo
Sector035
Ritu Gill (@OSINTTechniques)

Links to what we discussed

Protecting personal privacy against unauthorized deep learning models: https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes/
Search for videos across 60 platforms: https://www.peteyvid.com/
Estimate the size of a crowd with this tool: https://www.mapchecking.com/
Twitter thread about the video conferencing platform Zoom: https://twitter.com/securitytrails/status/1284187387103457282
Great verification case study in French: https://ledesk.ma/desintox/le-bonimenteur-de-habanos-sa-encore-frappe-il-sest-paye-un-panama-paper/
Twitter search tricks: https://www.labnol.org/internet/twitter-search-tricks/13693/
Improved face detection software that even works on animals: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/07/digikams-improved-face-detection-for-photos-even-works-on-animals
Blog that has started dropping “0Days” with regards to the TOR project: https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/888-Tor-0day-Stopping-Tor-Connections.html
New Telegram update: https://telegram.org/blog/profile-videos-people-nearby-and-more
Upcoming virtual OSINT Symposium between 10 and 13 October: https://www.osintsymposium.com/event-details/australian-osint-symposium-1

Self Promotion

Learn more about Ines’s work: https://medialab.iscte-iul.pt/ (in Portuguese with some English articles)
The Open Source Intelligence Skills-building Conference (October 2020): https://www.osmosiscon.com/
German Open Source Intelligence Conference (GOCON): https://www.gosintcon.de/ – if you have any questions, reach out to Matthias (@mwosint)

Episode 40: Geolocating IPs and mobile phones, PimEye, 3D reconstruction of facial images and more... Jul 13, 2020

Show notes

People in this Episode

Micah Hoffman (@webbreacher)
Matthias Wilson (@mwosint)
Nixintel
Technisette
Baywolf88

Links to what we discussed

https://www.instagram.com/hushpuppi/?hl=en Big phishing criminal Hushpuppi arrested in Dubai. His Instagram account was well-known for flaunting his wealth. Allowed investigators to track his movements and identify his financial assets.
https://pimeyes.com/en/ Matches facial images from across the web
https://keyfindings.blog/2020/07/01/saving-images-from-google-maps-and-street-view/ Getting photo sphere images from Google Maps using developer tools
https://nixintel.info/osint/geolocating-mobile-phones-with-an-ip/ Gives insight on the locations of IP adresses
https://twitter.com/SebMeineck/status/1281577528164003841 PimEye reaction to a recent article (https://netzpolitik.org/2020/pimeyes-face-search-company-is-abolishing-our-anonymity/), now you can’t upload a pic anymore. You can only allow PimEye access to your camera
https://pskreporter.info/pskmap Shows ham radio operators (with call sign and location) worldwide. Might be useful is ever working on a case involving ham radios
https://twitter.com/LorandBodo/status/1281606517825974273 This website allows users to create a 3d reconstruction from a single image. super useful for osint investigations.
https://medium.com/@CassiusXIII Guide to corporate OSINT recon
https://keyfindings.blog/2020/07/12/how-to-geolocate-mobile-phones-or-not/ Follow-up on the IP geolocation article
https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/who-where-whomwith-wwww-a-facial-recognition-tool-for-image-based-data-gathering-and-graph-dd8f2b13c279
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news_but_tbh_if_you_have_tiktiok_just_get/fmuko1m/?context=1 TikTok mobile app security issues and how they may impact your investigations.

Self Promotion

Micah Hoffman, Nico Dekens & John TerBush: SANS SEC487 Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) Gathering & Analysis. Several options for Live Online & In Person

Episode 39: Ibexmind with Peter King, Twitter history, aircraft and drone monitoring, TraceLabs OSINT Virtual Machine and more... Jun 30, 2020

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People in this Episode