I'm amazed at how many people use OSINT for various purposes in unique ways. No matter what type of intelligence professional you are, these ten blogs will make you think outside the box:

• AaronCTI by Aaron Roberts.
• Benjaminstrick.com by Benjamin Strick.
• Cqcore.uk by Ginger T.
• The Week in OSINT by Sector035.
• Secjuice by Guise Bule.
• Hackers Arise by OccupytheWeb.
• IntelTechniques by Michael Bazzel.
• The OSINT Guide by Thomas Caliendo.
• OSINT Combine by OSINT Combine.
• OSINT GUARDIAN by Claudia Lopez.

Aaron Roberts (AaronCTI)

AaronCTI is a personal blog of Aaron Roberts, an experienced intelligence analyst and investigator. He specialises in Cyber Threat Intelligence and Open-Source Intelligence. His blog contains techniques to find information online to support the protection of organisations and individuals from cybercriminals. He is the author of "Cyber Threat Intelligence: The No-Nonsense Guide for CISOs and Security Managers".

Favourite article

My OSINT Blueprint - Methodology and Tools Part One - AaronCTI

Learn how I approach OSINT investigations and what tools and approaches I take to answering intelligence requirements.

AaronCTIAaronCTI

I found this article insightful in many aspects. Aaron's detailed explanation of his OSINT blueprint and methodology resonated with me. Particularly the emphasis on the importance of understanding the aim of the investigation. I liked the practical tips and recommended tools for investigating email addresses, phone numbers, and social media accounts.

The article's focus on leveraging automated tools and manual research for information gathering is a good approach to OSINT investigations. Overall, the article is valuable for refining and enhancing your OSINT methodology.

Benjamin Strick

Benjaminstrick.com is a personal blog of Benjamin Strick, a digital investigator with expertise in law, investigative journalism, and the military. He focuses on Open-Source Intelligence, investigations, information warfare, data, and maps.

Ben is the Director of Investigations at the Centre for Information Resilience. He leads teams in utilising Open-Source intelligence (OSINT) to support journalism, civil society, governments, and accountability mechanisms. His work has a strong emphasis on Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, and Libya.

Favourite article

Mind Games - How hacking perceptions is becoming a weapon of choice for online warfare - Benjamin Strick

NOTE: This piece was originally published in the E-Zine HVCK. You can see that original version here. There was a time when I’d open my phone first thing in the morning, not to read messages from family, work, or to do my morning meditation, but to read the Twitter feeds of a middle-aged male called... Continue reading →

Benjamin StrickBen

Ben provides a detailed explanation of how sock puppet accounts were used in information warfare campaigns. He gives a first hand experiences in uncovering these networks and breaks down influence operations. It would be hard for an average citizen to uncover such a well-planned campaigns without OSINT skills. Thus, I agree that we need digital media literacy and critical thinking to be able to assess online information.

Overall, this is a great guide for uncovering disinformation campaigns. The way Ben explains his reasoning and illustrates each step with comprehensive graphs is amazing! This long-read definitely deserves your attention.

Cqcore.uk

Cqcore.uk is a blog by Ginger T. He has a keen interest in OSINT, OPSEC, Obfuscation, Threat Profiling & Privacy. He also created, The-OSINT-Toolbox which has many OSINT & Privacy tools and resources.

Favourite article

OSINT Methodology is my favourite article on his blog. The practical tips and resources Ginger T shared in this writeup are now going into my own OSINT toolkit. His article blends practical tips with OSINT methodology. He stresses that it's not important whose methodology you follow. More important is is to have your own methodology. We process information differently and our intelligence process will be different as well. I would like to quote the following:

You can set numerous OSINT practitioners the same task, they will all get to the same result, however they may all have had their own methodology behind how they got there. We are all different, think differently and work problems out differently, that is the key to a methodology.

The Week in OSINT

The Week in OSINT is a blog by Sector035. He is a prominent figure in the world of Open-Source Intelligence and an ex-OSINT Curious member. He has extensive experience in digital investigations, geolocation, and chronolocation.

Favourite article

Week in OSINT 202421

This week we’ll be looking at the way Google used to look, and how to retrieve that, an old chat app, and more interesting topics. This

Sector035

Among many things, this post discusses Google's latest move to introduce AI-powered answers in search results. It might be helpful for an average user, but OSINT researchers prefer unaltered responses. There's a workaround by adding a specific parameter to the URL to remove AI-generated information and ads. That's a key takeaway for you, read the article for more insights.

Every week he posts a couple of resources from the OSINT community and shares his opinion about them. His opinions are highly technical and he dives into the complexities of OSINT, which is what I like about his blog.

Secjuice

Secjuice is a volunteer-led collective in cybersecurity space founded by Guise Bule. They have a community of writers covering information security, network security, hacking, cyberwar, and open source intelligence gathering. I particularly like their OSINT topic page, lots of good stuff there.

Favourite articles

Secjuice is a treasure trove of knowledge, so I picked several articles to share with you.

• A Guide To Social Media Intelligence Gathering (SOCMINT) by Nihad Hassan – a comprehensive SOCMINT tutorial that covers types of information on socials and how to collect it.
• Account Knocking For Fun and OSINT by Sinwindie. This article was posted a couple of years ago, but the methodology still relevant. Password reset is one of the basic OSINT techniques and Sinwindie explained it well.
• Pastebin and Its Incidental OSINT by Tom Caliendo – pastebins are great for collecting intelligence on organisations. Tom explains in plain language what pastebins are and how to search them.

Hackers Arise

Hackers Arise is a blog by OccupytheWeb. It was founded by a professional hacker, who went from teaching at university to doing cybersecurity trainings for the military. The website has good tutorials on hacking and various courses. 

Favourite article

IP Camera Hacking: Hacking IP Cameras with Cameradar

Welcome back, my aspiring IP camera hackers!As most of you know, we have played a key role in the defense of Ukraine. Among our many activities in defense of Ukraine is the hacking of IP cameras throughout the country. In this way, we can spy on Russian activities and war crimes. We did this at the request of the Ukraine Army starting in April 2022. For more on Hackers-Arise activities in Ukraine check out this post. For more information on our IP camera hacking to support Ukraine, check out th

hackers-ariseotw

The article covers Cameradar, a powerful tool for IP camera hacking. By leveraging Docker, Cameradar simplifies brute-forcing IP camera credentials, enabling custom username and password lists for more targeted and effective hacking attempts. 

The article nicely covers brute-force methods and how to select dictionaries to get live access to web cameras. Highly technical people will definitely enjoy this read.

IntelTechniques

IntelTechniques is a blog by Michael Bazzel, probably the most famous person in the OSINT space. He has a great The Privacy, Security, & OSINT Show. This podcast actually brought me into OSINT, thanks Michael! Apart from that he is an author of the legendary OSINT books.

Favourite article

Darter Pro Part 2: Truly Secure Dual-Booting – IntelTechniques Blog

IntelTechniques Blog

Michael doesn't have many tutorials on his blog, it's much better to listen to his podcast or read the book. However, this article gives a good overview of the laptop where you can set up your OSINT lab. Secure booting, private environment... You know what I mean. No one wants bad OPSEC, so this tutorial got you covered.

The OSINT Guide

The OSINT Guide is a blog by Thomas Caliendo. Tom is licensed and experienced in various fields, including cryptocurrency investigation, archival research, cybersecurity, private investigation, and genealogy. He also is the author of the book "The Open Source Intelligence Guide".

Favourite article

i) Crypto OSINT What your crypto transactions look like in OSINT

This post is to show what crypto transactions look like on blockchain explorers versus what the user sees in their personal device. This is the first of several on this topic. Getting Started So I …

The OSINT GuideSEARCH-ish Author

Thomas covered how crypto transactions are observed on blockchain explorers versus personal devices. He took time to take screenshots from his crypto accounts and walk the reader step-by-step as the transaction gets sent on the blockchain. Overall, I like how he explains complicated things in simple language in all of his articles.

OSINT Combine

OSINT Combine is a blog written by OSINT Combine. It is a veteran-operated company founded by Chris Poulter. They provide leading OSINT software and training around the globe.

Favourite article

Prompting AI for Open-Source Intelligence

There is so much information out there regarding AI. And fair enough, it is and will continue to infiltrate our daily lives. There is less about AI and how it directly relates to OSINT (this is why the team will be talking more about the challenges and opportunities of Generative AI at the 2024 Australian OSINT Symposium).But, personally speaking, I have been using Generative AI daily and have found many opportunities to increase my productivity and quality of work as an OSINT trainer, on specif

OSINT CombineJacob H

This article focuses on the effective use of Generative AI in the context of OSINT. It provides insights and techniques for prompting AI systems. It emphasises that we should leverage AI's capabilities for increased productivity and improved quality of work in OSINT tasks. It also gives practical examples and prompts to use on your next project. I appreciate how the company embraces AI and leverages it as one of the tools to support investigative work.

OSINT GUARDIAN

OSINT GUARDIAN is a personal blog of Claudia Lopez. She publishes investigations regarding cybercriminals related to child exploitation and non-consensual pornography.

In fact, Claudia was recently pressured by lawyers for her investigative work. Definitely worth checking how she stands her ground in the fight for justice and writes educational articles in the meantime. It's a blog I discovered a couple of days ago and definitely will be following it for more updates.

Favourite article

WPScan: the best tool in the world to do OSINT analysis in WordPress. - OSINTGuardian

wpscan is a tool written and programmed in the Ruby programming language that can give OSINT researchers information about websites that use the WordPress platform as a base. This tool is for advanced OSINT users. Since to use it you will need to know about terminal commands and how to run a script in a […]

OSINTGuardianClaudia Lopez

Initially, I thought I would pick an article on how to investigate ok.ru. I love good SOCMINT tutorials that cover location-specific social networks. However, I'm also a fan of domain investigation and since WordPress is the most popular Content Management System I shared this domain research write-up. The article covers how to install and use this tool to research WordPress vulnerabilities.

There are more awesome blogs!

Wow, that was a diverse collection of blogs that covers OSINT from various angles! Would you like to check out other awesome blogs? I'm sure you do, so here is my previous article from this series:

Learn from experts. 10 OSINT blogs you should follow.

Open-Source Intelligence blogs that will help to improve your skills. A curated list of topics from cybersecurity, threat intelligence to GEOINT.

OSINT Team - Learn Open-Source Intelligence from expertsPetro Cherkasets

And yeah, subscribe using the from below for more insights. More great OSINT blogs are coming soon. Stay tuned!