OSINT Resources

In our last post, we had a brief introduction to Open Source Intelligence, Its uses, its strategies etc. Now, in this post, we will study about the resources that will be helping us in gathering and analyzing the data of our targets. Out of these resources, some will be Live Hosted Websites, Some Search Engines and some will be tools which will be handy in our investigation.

Search Engines

Searx

Searx is the free internet meta search engines that neither tracks users nor profiles them as of other search engines. It also has high accuracy as it gathers results from over 70 other supported engines. The best feature about it is that its self hosted that is installed on your own system and also can be used with TOR to increase anonymity online.

The best thing is that its installed in our own system so, it assures our safety in our own hands and also has well defined documents for developers and administrators and is also used by many companies that promote digital rights.Its more details and a detailed setup guide can be found on its site given below.

Link: https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/

Knowem

This Platform is commonly used to find and reserve your desired username for your organization or brand before anyone books it. But, we will be using it in a different manner called the hacker’s way. We will use it to find our target’s username from the database of more than 500 emerging social media sites.

It is beneficial as it is used also if your target is a company or an individual.

Link: https://knowem.com/

Check Usernames

This is a very much similar platform powered by KnowEm. It is also used for the same purpose as of KnowEm, which is to scrape the database and find our target on different social media platforms using its username. It also has a very wide database of around 160 growing social media platforms. It doesn’t matters whether your victim is a organization or a individual. It works in all cases. Its list has very famous sites even like Youtube, Wikipedia, LinkedIn Twitter etc

Link : https://checkusernames.com/

Pipl

This is avery useful platform. Although it has lots of alternatives as well but still Pipl is the most trustworthy and used People Search Engine. Like Normal Search Engines. We don’t search here for theoretical information. We use several factors like Name, Email Address, Social Media names, phone numbers etc to find all other unavaialable information about our target. These types of sites are also called as privacy invaders as they reveal a lot of sensistive information about people.

Link : https://pipl.com

SHODAN

This search engines is primarily focused on deep web and Internet of Things (IOT).

It is the best to find publicly accessible computers inside any networks. This is the reason why it is called the Search Engine for Hackers. It allows us to explore different types of devices like Webcams, CCTV cams, Database servers, Routers etc which are connected to internet. It is very much like Google but doesn’t has those attractive images and fancy text instead has all accessible devices list and their configurations that are of interest of Security Researchers.

Link: htps://shodan.io