OSINT

Open Source Intelligence tools. Tools for finding information in the depths of the Internet.

Sources and collections of tools

• jivoi/awesome-osint a large collection of OSINT tools of many types
• OSINT framework - investigation tools
• OSINT Global - investigation tools
• Malfrat's OSINT Map
• ex16x41 Toolset
• Rawsec's Cybersecurity Inventory
• Justice Cook Tools - throwaway contacts, search engines, crypto, username search,
• Bellincat Online Investigation Toolkit - spreadsheet of many types of tools
• Michael Bazzell's tools (search, social, maps, etc), website for a book about OSINT
• Worldwide OSINT tools Map - Links to various intelligence sources by geography. Some adblocking interferes with this site - may need to disable for the map to show
• OSINT browser extensions
• OSINT VM - a Linux distro packaged with various OSINT tools
• OSINT Combine tools and bookmark collections

Guides

• Ben Strick's OSI Guide - YouTube series on how to do open source research
• First Draft News - Contains resources and OSINT training challenges
• Fact Checking Guides
• Washington Post Fact Checker Guide
• OSINT Dojo
• Geoguessr - tips, tricks, and techniques - the most intense guide I've ever seen on recognizing (outdoor) places from photos

Feeds to Follow

• Week in OSINT
• r/OSINT
• Bendobrown (his newsletter called Field Notes)
• Jake Creps' OSINT Newsletter

Challenges and Games

• Geoguessr - browser-based game where one guesses the location of Street View imagery
• Geotastic - another browser-based Street View quiz game
• Seterra - more of a map quiz
• OSINT Dojo Student Challenge

Privacy and OPSEC

• Privacy Badger Chrome Extension
• uBlock Origin – Chrome Extension, One of the best for privacy and opsec
• Clear URLS - Chrome Extension, This extension will automatically remove tracking elements from URLs to help protect your privacy when browse through the Internet.
• Location Guard - Chrome Extension, reports a false geographic location to websites.
• Canvas Fingerprint Defender - Chrome Extension, Defending against Canvas fingerprinting by reporting a fake value. This value can be used as a browser "fingerprint" to identify someone.
• Chaff - Chrome Extension, Generate random web browsing traffic to obfuscate actual browsing behavior to avoid profiling through 3rd party observation
• User-Agent-Switcher - Chrome Extension, Changes the identity of your browser and OS (as reported to websites by your browser) to those of your choice
• Decentraleyes - Chrome Extension, Protects you against tracking through "free", centralized, content delivery.
• LocalCDN - Chrome Extension, similar to Decentraleyes, more options
• Terms of Service; Didn’t Read - Chrome Extension, Get information instantly about websites' terms of service and privacy policies, with ratings and summaries.
• Location Guard - Chrome Extension, HTML5 geolocation spoofing

See also:

• Basic Computer Security Practices
• Data Privacy Strategies

Data Vendor Counterintelligence

• Data Removal Guide - on Michael Bazzell's site, an exhaustive list of data vendor sites you can opt out of so they unlist your data
• Julia Angwin's 212 Data Brokers - another list of data brokers, links to opt-out pages if available, other helpful notes on removing oneself from these
• Google (EU and other countries) - Google's "Personal Data Removal Request Form", does not currently apply for US citizens

Fact Checking and Verification

• Fake News Detector
• FactCheck.org monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases
• Snopes
• AllSides Media Bias

Search Engines

Google Dorking

• Google Search Operators - a thorough guide to Google search terminology
• Google Hacking Database - aka "Google Dorks", search terms that target very specific results (certain kinds of files, filetypes, devices, etc)
  • sudan filetype:kml for map data related to Sudan
  • intitle:"Webcam" inurl:WebCam.htm for unsecured network cameras
• DorkSearch - a tool for Google Dorking
• Pentest-tools.com Reconnaissance tools - includes a Google Dorking tool, subdomain finder, port scanners, URL fuzzer, find associated domains
• Fast Advanced Google Search – Chrome extension, turns every regular Google search into an advanced one, with various search customization options coming up instantly.
• Dork Search Pro: another Google Dork tool, for finding specific things and building advanced search terms

Meta search engines

• Carrot2 organizes search results into topics, cluster maps, charts
• All the Internet
• eTools
• FaganFinder
• Goofram
• iZito
• Myallsearch
• Qwant
• Swisscows
• Zapmeta

Similar sites search

Find websites that are similar. Good for business competition research.

• Google Similar Pages
• SimilarSites - Discover websites that are similar to each other
• SitesLike - Find similar websites by category

File Search

• ODcrawler - open directory crawler
• Metagoofil - comes with Kali, search a domain for documents

Search by Image

• Google Images - search by image, then there is an option to click "find image source" to ID origin of an image
• TinEye Reverse Image Search Chrome Extension
• RevEye Reverse Image Search – Chrome Extension, reverse image searching with Google, Bing, Yandex, and TinEye.
• Search by Image – another reverse search extension for images.**

Email Search

• Hunter.io
• Hunter.io Extension Chrome Extension

IP, URLs, etc.

• ZoomEye
• Mitaka IP search, domains, URLs, hashes
• Sputnik – another one for looking up IPs, domains, hashes, etc.
• Shodan
• DNSDumpster subdomain enumeration, DNS records
• crt.sh pulls DNS names from TLS certificates
• Use Google for DNS recon: site:berkeley.edu -site:www.berkeley.edu
• LazyRecon - a Shell script that automates domain recon. Generates results as an HMTL report.
• Intelligence X archival service and search engine that preserves not only historic versions of web pages but also entire leaked data sets that are otherwise removed from the web due to the objectionable nature of content or legal reasons.
• theHarvester tool that comes with Kali
• I Know What You Download - search an IP address to see if their IP address has been logged in torrent traffic

Code

• Grep.app search Git repos

Satellite Map Tools

1. Google Earth - the desktop app, which has extra features like the ability to scroll back and forth in time. Some areas, like London, have satellite imagery going back to 1940s
2. Sentinel Hub
3. Zoom Earth
4. World Imagery Wayback Tool
5. Planet Lab?
6. Worldview: a mapping tool made by a former Google Maps developer that correlates data from satellites, air flights, GPS jamming, ships, and more to better capture events between nations such as Operation Epic Fury in Iran

ADSB

• adsb.lol

Geographic Information System (GIS)

See GIS.

Street View

• Google Maps
• Apple Maps
• Mapillary
• Yandex Maps - panorama photo option,
• KartaView
• Carta.ma - street view images of Morocco

Data

• EXIF Viewer Pro – Chrome Extension

Web

• BuiltWith Technology Profiler – Chrome Extension for checking what a website is built with, what technologies are present.
• WhatRuns – Chrome Extension for checking what a website is built with, what technologies are present.
• Wappalyzer – Chrome Extension for checking what a website is built with, what technologies are present.
• Pulsedive Threat Intelligence – Chrome Extension, Highlight IPs, domains, and URLs on any website to enrich them using Pulsedive's free threat intelligence data set.
• The Network tab in the Inspect tools is great for recording activity of any browser-based page.

Scrapers

• Simplescraper ⁠— a fast and free web scraper – for automated scraping and saving websites as CSV or JSON files.
• Instant Data Scraper – extracts data from web pages and exports it as Excel or CSV files.
• Data Scraper – Chrome Extension that allows one to create custom scrapers for various websites, collecting structured data from websites

Watchback Tools

aka sousveillance

• FuckLAPD.com: A website (launched June 2025) that lets users upload images of LAPD officers to match against a database of ~9,000 headshots obtained via public documents. Processing happens client-side and no data is stored by the site
• Watch the Watchers
• Police Officers Faces: A large-scale facial recognition dataset encompassing approximately 90,000 images of thousands of law enforcement officers.
• Open Source Munitions Portal: Reported sightings of military weapons tech being used around the world
• Atlas of Surveillance provides search engine for information on tools and contracts for police departments around the country. Also provides an interactive map of police tech in the U.S.

Government Documents

• MuckRock - a non-profit collaborative news site that provides tools for sending and tracking FOIA requests and encouraging transparency
• Data.gov - the U.S. Government's Open Data platform

Federal Agency Info

• Federal Pay
• Feds Data Center — Search by name, agency, or year for federal salary data.
• Federal Pay — Similar to above, includes military pay scales.
• https://www.opm.gov — Hosts workforce reports, employment stats, and guidance.
• https://www.gao.gov/plum-book — Lists political appointees in all branches.

Archives

• Unpaywall - Chrome extension for accessing articles that are available elsewhere for free.
• NewspaperArchive –
• Wayback Machine – Internet Archive
• Arxiv – Scholarly articles archive

Investigation Tools

• Moriarty Project – tries to find info based on a phone number

• Whats My Name

• intelx tools

• Vortimo search tool

• Maltego - data mining tool, works by mining many different APIs for data

Visualization

• TimelineJS - create timelines
• Vortimo browser extension that stores screenshots, scrapes data as you investigate, and other tools supporting investigative work
• Take Webpage Screenshots Entirely – FireShot – Chrome Extension, for full page screen capture.
• Nimbus Screenshot & Screen Video Recorder – for screenshots and screen capture.

Social Media

• Reddit Archive
• Reddit User Analyzer
• Better Reddit Search
• memory.lol - a web service that provides historical info about social media accounts
• Tenai Private Instagram Chaining
• Story Saver - Chrome extension that works with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp

Radio

• RadioReference for frequencies used in an area
• OpenMHz - Police and Fire scanner
• Police Frequencies
• Scanner Frequencies

Throwaway Contacts

• Privacy.com Generate multiple "credit card" to use - i.e. one for Amazon, another for Target, etc. Any payments will be routed to your real credit card, debit card, or bank account. This is especially useful if you want buy something from a company you've never patronized before.
• TempMail - Receive email at a temporary email address
• 10 Minute Mail
• Fax Zero - free fax
• Globfone free SMS send SMS
• Receive SMS Online for Free

Misc

• Copyfish - Chrome Extension, performs OCR - copy, paste, and translate text from any image, video, or PDF
• Insecam - Live cameras directory
• ImportYeti - find a company's suppliers

See OSINT Gray