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March 22, 2024
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A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your First OSINT Program
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of information from publicly available sources. As an essential method for gathering intelligence, OSINT plays a critical role in cyber threat intelligence, cybersecurity, penetration testing, national security, and law enforcement investigations.
With the massive growth in digitally available data and the tools to collect and process this information, OSINT presents invaluable insights and intelligence. However, for an OSINT beginner, knowing where to start can be daunting.
This blog serves as a step-by-step beginner's guide to building your first OSINT program. By the end, you will have a clear framework to gather, analyze, and operationalize open-source data to enhance security and decision making.
What is OSINT and Why is it Important?
OSINT or Open-Source Intelligence refers to publicly accessible information collected and used to derive actionable intelligence. Unlike classified sources of intelligence, OSINT is obtained through legal means from open sources, including:
News publications
Academic literature
Public government data
Corporate records
Websites
Social media platforms
Online forums
Job listings
And essentially any other publicly available online or offline source.
OSINT holds critical value for a wide range of use cases:
Cyber Threat Intelligence - Track threat actors, identify emerging attack trends, vulnerability exploitation, and other insights to enhance security.
Competitive Intelligence - Gain market awareness, benchmark competitors, understand industry shifts, identify partnership and acquisition targets.
Fraud Investigations - Uncover fraudulent activities, intellectual property infringements, counterfeit goods sales, and criminal funding networks.
Geopolitical Analysis - Monitor societal and political shifts, analyze global events, uncover disinformation campaigns.
Risk Management - Surface reputational threats, detect data exposure, compliance violations and insider threats.
Clearly, OSINT presents invaluable intelligence. But like any capability, having an effective framework and methodology is vital to success, especially for beginners.
Step 1: Identify Your Intelligence Requirements
When building your first OSINT program, the first step is to clearly define your intelligence requirements - the specific questions or unknowns you want OSINT to uncover. Much like gardening, you must start with the end in mind.
Some example intelligence requirements:
What cybercriminal groups target organizations in my industry? What are their latest tactics, tools, and procedures (TTPs)?
How much publicly exposed data exists on our employees and technology infrastructure?
Which competitors are gaining the most market traction? How do our product offerings compare?
What supply chain risks or regulatory shifts could impact operations?
Outline 4-5 key intelligence requirements that map to your highest priority objectives for the OSINT program, whether it be security analysis, competitive intelligence, investigations, or otherwise. These requirements will drive decisions in subsequent stages regarding tools, techniques, and processes.
Step 2: Identify Sources
With intelligence requirements defined, the next step is listing information sources that can address those requirements.
Sources vary significantly in depth, reliability, and accessibility. OSINT frameworks like the one below help navigate options:
Prioritize free sources first as you build OSINT capabilities. Some valuable free sources include:
The list of publicly available sources is endless. Focus on free options first and identify paid sources to incorporate later as needed.
Step 3: Select Your Tools
The third step is choosing OSINT tools to automate the collection and analysis of data from selected sources. Manually sifting through publicly available information is ineffective given the rate information grows online.
Rely on tools tailored to your experience level and specific intelligence requirements. Some examples include:
General Search
Google Dorks/Hacking - Special search engine queries to surface non-indexed content.
Datasploit - OSINT aggregation and automation tool great for beginners.
Social Media Analysis
Web Reconnaissance
Location Intelligence
GeoFeedia - Real-time geofenced social media monitoring for a targeted region.
Bellingcat Toolbox - Location-focused verification techniques for online images and videos.
The list goes on based on specialty. Focus on documenting your process and refine tools over time as needed.
Other OSINT Tools, Techniques, and Resources
Step 4: Develop Your Methodology
With requirements, sources, and tools established, the next step is developing an OSINT methodology that ties everything together into a repeatable framework. A basic methodology:
Planning
Outline intelligence requirements
Identify information sources
Select tools
Collection
Leverage tools to extract data from selected sources
Store data in a central repository
Analysis
Assess data relevance to requirements
Identify patterns and anomalies
Enrich data with supplemental sources
Dissemination
Create intelligence products answering requirements
Establish processes for stakeholder consumption
Feedback
Evaluate process gaps
Refine methodology for future iterations
This basic OSINT cycle facilitates a learning loop for continuous enhancement. Now it's time to execute.
Step 5: Build Your First OSINT Report
With the framework established, execute your first end-to-end OSINT collection, analysis and dissemination exercise. Maintain focus on delivering against 1-2 intelligence requirements rather than diluted analysis on too many fronts.
Some best practices for your first report:
Demonstrate the full intelligence cycle from planning to dissemination.
Focus on freely available sources to control scope.
Select analysis technique(s) tailored to your experience level.
Deliver findings in an easy-to-understand report format digestible to stakeholders.
Do not aim for perfection out of the gates. View the first report as establishing an initial capability to refine over subsequent iterations. The key is learning by doing.
Step 6: Evaluate and Enhance
With the first full OSINT exercise complete, conduct an after-action review on what worked well and what requires refinement in your methodology. Key evaluation criteria:
Were my intelligence requirements addressed? If not, why?
What collection sources provided the highest value? Lowest value?
What tools were most effective? Which fell short?
Were analysis techniques sufficient to extract insights?
Did the report format effectively communicate findings?
Identify 2-3 areas of enhancement and refine your OSINT program using an agile, iterative approach. View OSINT capabilities as perpetually evolving to drive continuous value.
Bottom Line
Developing an OSINT practice requires thoughtful planning, flexibility in tooling and techniques, and a focus on iteration. While public information presents immense opportunity, having a dialed methodology is vital to operationalize insights at scale.
This initial framework offers a starting point to build capabilities delivering security and intelligence value. What intelligence requirements would you want OSINT to help uncover? How might this methodology need tailoring for your first open-source program?
We hope this post helped in Building Your First OSINT Program. Thanks for reading this post. Please share this post and help secure the digital world. Visit our website, thesecmaster.com, and our social media page on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Telegram, Tumblr, Medium, and Instagram and subscribe to receive updates like this.
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Arun KL
Arun KL is a cybersecurity professional with 15+ years of experience in IT infrastructure, cloud security, vulnerability management, Penetration Testing, security operations, and incident response. He is adept at designing and implementing robust security solutions to safeguard systems and data. Arun holds multiple industry certifications including CCNA, CCNA Security, RHCE, CEH, and AWS Security.
