Open source intelligence (OSINT) is the legal gathering of information from public online sources. It can include information about people, businesses, and their internet-related activities. OSINT is free to access and use.
Please don’t send me questions about these tools, Please see the Resources and Guides section at the top of this list and start reading “How To’s” if you are lost. There are directions on each link on how to use them. I don’t have time to respond, google is your friend, not me. Some of these tools will require Python installations. Learn.
Resources and Guides
- Guides
- @malachybrowne/OSINT Twitter list. – Follow this. And if you aren’t on Twitter, even with a fake account, you’re doing all of this wrong.
- OS2Int – :: About :: Our sole mission is to impart our expertise in OSINT collection and Intelligence Analysis for those who require advanced capabilities to detect and monitor threats
- Bellingcat – :: About :: Bellingcat is an independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists using open source and social media investigation to probe a variety of subjects
- Bellingcat GitHub – Advanced. The Bellingcat Tech team develops tools for open source investigations and explores tech-focused research techniques.
- @cyb_detective Github – *huge* list of OSINT tools broken down by category.
- OSINT Framework – Great collection of OSINT Tools
- Hatless1der’s collection of tools – Excellent repository of different OSINT tools.
- Email Address OSINT Resources – When we conduct OSINT investigations, having a target’s email address can sometimes result in finding a goldmine of information about the user of that email.
Protect Your Identity
It should be noted that nothing will 100% protect you, and that you should still proceed with caution when you are online. Even with these tools to protect your identity, please remember that anonymity is never guaranteed. Most of the products listed below are *free* and therefore less secure (outside of Tor)
- Browsing: The Tor Project – Download Tor Browser to experience real private browsing without tracking, surveillance, or censorship.
- Email: Proton Mail
- VPN: Proton VPN, MullvadVPN
- Passwords: BitWarden
- Messaging: Session, Signal
Social Media Tools
- OSINT Toolkit – Email & Username – Search for a username or email address across multiple social sites.
- Nexfil – (Python Install) OSINT Tool For Finding Profiles By Username
- WhatsMyName.app – This tool allows you to enumerate usernames across many websites
- Who Posted What – allows you to search keywords on specific dates.
- Facebook Video Downloader – Download videos from Facebook for offline storage / dumping
- Facebook Friends Generator – Sometimes Friends Lists are set to private. This Chrome Extension generates a Facebook list off of Comments and Likes done on a profiles posts.
- Facebook Email Reverse Lookup – Before the Cambridge Analytica scandal in early 2018 you could lookup the Facebook account linked to an email address depending on the privacy settings. This Chrome Extension brings back that ability.
- SkopeNow – (Free Trial Available) Automated Intelligence across multiple social media platforms.
- Phantom Buster – (Free Trial Available) A set of tools that will extract data from social media profiles
- Instaloader – (Python Install) – Scrape information from public Instagram accounts. Allows downloading pictures and videos along with their captions and other metadata from Instagram.
- Story Saver – Download Instagram stories.
- Epieos – Look up an email address to see if it is connected to a LinkedIn profile.
- SMAT – Analyze hate and disinformation online
- Pushshift.io – (Requires a Google BigQuery account – Free) Use Big Data to query social media platforms.
- SnapMap – Use Snap Chat maps to locate people.
- Download Snap Chats – This tweet shows you how to download Snap Chats for offline use / analysis.
- Search4Faces – Upload a photo of someone and it will search TikTok or Instagram for profiles that look like the person in the photo. Its kind of creepy!
- Unofficial TikTok API in Python – (Python Install) This is an unofficial api wrapper for TikTok.com in python. With this api you are able to call most trending and fetch specific user information as well as much more.
- TikTok Scraper – (Node.JS install) extracting TikTok video posts, scrape user data, and extract media / data associated with hashtags.
- Twitter Video Downloader – Download twitter videos & GIF from tweets
- Twitter Audit – Check for Twitter Bots
- Bot-O-Meter – Check to see if a specific account is a twitter bot.
- Twitter Follower Collector – Collect a Twitter Accounts followers
- Twlets – Download a twitter accounts tweets to an excel spreadsheet.
- TWINT – (Python Install) Twitter Intelligence Tool
- Thoughtfaucet – How to do a Twitter search by GeoLocation.
- Treeverse – visualize Twitter Conversations.
- Whatsmyname – Search Social Media platforms for specific usernames. Here is another one called CheckUsernames.
- Download Youtube Videos
- Deepfake Detection – Detect if a profile or picture is a Deepfake / GAN
- Gephi – Social Network Analysis: easy creation of social data connectors to map community organizations and small-world networks.
General OSINT Tools – Not Social Media specific
- VLC Media Player – Dump Videos to Images and other uses
- InVid – a Video Forensics tool
- Investigator Recon Tool – Investigator helps you quickly check and gather information about the target domain name.
- Grabify – Grabify IP Logger URL & Shortener provides you with some of the most advanced and detailed statistical data and metadata for all clicks on your links
- MetaData2Go – Check files for Meta Data.
- RevEye Reverse Image Search – Perform a search by image. Choose between the image search engines Google, Bing, Yandex, and TinEye.
- TinEye – Reverge Image Search
- Exif Data Online – Check a photo for Exif Data which may contain Geo Location, Phone Type, Date/Time, etc.
- WhitePages -Find people, contact info & background checks
- Email Rep – Check how reputable an email address is.
- Fast People Search – Find a person by name, phone number, or street address.
- Image Verification assistant – Can detect image alterations. FotoForensics is another good tool.
- Google Lens – Reverse Image lookup
- Way Back Machine – Look up website that were archived. There is also a WayBackMachine downloader – (Python Install)
- Whois.net – Who owns that website?
- MXToolBox – A collection of Internet tools. Reverse IP Lookup, Mail eXchanger Digging, DNS tools, Blacklists etc.
- Geo Data Tool – Check the Geo Location of any IP Address.
- InfoSniper – Another great Geo Location of IP Address.
- Numkookup.com – who called you?
- Spokeo – Some Items Free – Some paid Search by name, phone, address, or email to confidentially lookup information about people you know such as yourself, friends, family, acquaintances, and old classmates.
- Insecam – Directory of online surveillance security cameras
- ViS – Visualization Tool for Investigators. Think of this as an “Evidence Board” or a “Mind Map”. This used to be my favorite but they’re experiencing some tech issues. Worth looking at to see if its resolved.
- Coggle – another Mindmap resource