The most detailed OSINT manual in Runet

[DronVR]

This is an introductory article to a lot of materials. Probably one of the most important skills in the 21st century is the ability to search for the right information. That's what I want to tell you about real examples. Indeed, sometimes it is necessary to find data about a specific person or obtain information about a company. This is a very useful skill, which significantly expands the horizons and allows you to see new opportunities.

What is OSINT?

OSINT (Open source intelligence) is the collection of information from open sources with subsequent analysis. The latter has a very important role in obtaining the result. After all, it is very important not only to obtain information, but also to correctly process, analyze and draw conclusions. ​

It is in this article that I would like to focus on a sequential process. This is very important, since a complete data collection should include at least several stages, have specific tasks, and also ways to achieve it. Therefore, today we will consider one of the possible options for how best to approach OSINTy, as well as what should be used at the initial stages in order to maximize the efficiency of searching through open sources and analyzing the information received.

How is a structured approach to searching on open data?
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I see the process in approximately this order. If for a specific task you do not need to complete all the points, then you can skip some points.

Stage 1. Formation of tasks
At this stage, you need to clearly understand what you need to get in the end. It can be, for example, nicknames that the target uses. Or you need to break through absolutely all the information about a person on the Internet.

Stage 2. Planning
This is a very important stage. On it you need to determine all possible directions and sources that will be used for search. As a rule, there are 3 main ones:

• Personal (social networks, blogs, sites, nicknames, etc.).
• State (registers, bases, courts, taxes, border bases, diploma bases, base of invalid passports, etc.).
• External sources (friends, acquaintances, media, employers, recommendations).

It is very important to visualize. For this, it is best to use XMind, MindMap, or other similar applications. For each goal, you need to create your own roadmap, but it can look something like this.

Stage 3. Information gathering
This stage is probably the most time-consuming, but it is mainly implemented using a set of software and online services. It is very cool when you come to this stage you have some preliminary information. For example, you know that a person uses the name of his first teacher as a password. And, let's say, our victim has friends in VKontakte. This significantly narrows the circle and it becomes clear where you need to look first.

But sometimes there is no such information and you need to look for absolutely everything. First, it’s best to start with your first name, last name and nickname. Then you can unwind and look for a phone, a list of friends, build connections in social networks and forums. But as practice shows, almost all search results are based on three things: phone number , post office and nickname .

The main directions for finding information:

• Social networks (VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). Judging from the profiles of average users, you can pull out photos, nicknames, geos, friends, contacts, a city, connections with other participants, interests, groups, etc.
• Search engines. With the help of different operators, you can pull a lot of information. But for this you need to use advanced user operators. We will talk about this in detail in practical cases.
• Forums . You can understand interesting topics for communication, a circle of interests, relationships with other users, some political hobbies.
• Judicial sites. You can see if the person was suing, having in his hands the name and place of registration.
• Special Sites . For example, search engines Shodan and Censys. This will be relevant if you have a target IP address.
• Base of diplomas.
• Base of bailiffs.
• Invalid passport database .

This is not the whole list and you need to look depending on the specific purpose. After all, sometimes it happens that a person is not on social networks and all communication takes place exclusively on forums, but it happens exactly the opposite.

Stage 4. Analysis of the results
All information found should be well documented. It’s better to add notes on our roadmap. For example, if you found something interesting at the stage of collecting information, you must definitely note it visually. So that at the stage of analysis it can be analyzed in detail and draw conclusions.

If you were able to find files in the process of collecting information, then you need to pull out the meta data. You can use programs such as Foca , eg. You can also upload data from social networks and continue to work with them. In practical cases, we will also talk about how important and interesting data can be obtained using graphs and visual tools.

Be sure to keep correspondence, public messages or records in order to later analyze them. This is very important, since after reading the messages you can roughly understand the psychological portrait of our goal, and then work and use it to use the attack.

At the end of this stage, we should have a clear understanding of everything with whom the goal interacts, what it does, who it likes on social networks, with whom it communicates, and also where it is resting, what kind of geolocation it has in social networks. Absolutely everything and to the smallest details.

Stage 5. Formation of conclusions and preparation of results
At this stage, we have the so-called human map. We know basic information, we know preferences and interests, social circle, sphere of influence, activity in social networks, as well as on other resources. From the results of such work, you can understand that in general, a person represents how much he earns, what assets he has. And depending on this we can start.

For example, if a person is engaged in fishing, then you can come up with an interesting story and offer a free visiting tour, some kind of super cool book or membership in a club. It’s good to prepare a fake website, create a high-quality letter and send it to the target. You can, for example, ask that in order to get a free trip, you need to register on the site. So, for example, we can get an idea of what passwords our target is using. You can immediately check whether such an identical policy is used on all sites.

It is also very important to review the roadmap, it will make it possible to understand what, in general, we have and where the person spends the most time. If he communicates on social networks and actively uploads photos to instagram from photo exhibitions or from the same bar, then it can be seen there very often. And if you still offer on behalf of the institution some super offer through the mail, you can meet a person in a specific place and at a specific time. It all depends on your imagination.

Visualization
When streaming with big data, it is very important to work with visualization. Thus, you can not get confused and get more information. That is why I will show you several services that allow you to implement this function.

Wisemapping

A convenient set of icons, it is possible to make notes, design, can be divided into levels and sublevels. Ready-made cards can be discarded for collaboration. There is of course a minus, you can pick up the numbers in the link and find other cards.

Mindmeister

Free functionality with paid features. There is a standard set of functions: icons, pictures, notes and links. You can work together. Good service with average functionality.

Mindomo

There are paid features inside, but you can use the free version. It has more functionality for design and placement of elements. You can use ready-made templates for building maps. You can see an example of ready-made cards at the link.

Maltego

You've probably heard that this is a cool OSINT tool for automating searches. It is installed in Kali and a free version is sufficient for use. But it can also be used to build links and display information manually. Using Entities nodes, you can add people, nicknames, servers, ports, images, etc. But this topic is more likely for a separate article than for a paragraph.

Conclusion
The main idea of this article is to approach OSINTy as a clearly planned process. Then there is the opportunity to plan, collect and analyze the necessary information and not spray on unnecessary things. In the following articles, we will take a few specific tasks and analyze in more detail at each stage what can be done and how to use the tools for a more clear and understandable analysis.

Therefore, be patient, plan and set your tasks, and then we will gradually deal with them. All the best to new articles.

Source

 

[aleksandr]

Very interesting! More such articles