Top 11 OSINT Tools
Intro
Hackers attack systems using open source intelligence. Before a hacker can get to your data, you can use OSINT tools to see whether any of your data has been compromised on the web. Open-source intelligence technologies scour the web for information that is publicly available. Unless you beat them to it, criminal hackers will be able to take advantage of this. In this article, we’ve compiled a list of some of the top free OSINT tools for 2023 that you can use to better protect your privacy and assets.
What is Open Source Intelligence?
Open source intelligence (OSINT) is a term that refers to information obtained from a variety of publicly available sources. The Internet is a sea of information, which is both a benefit and a drawback. OSINT social media strategies may now be used in the sphere of cybersecurity as well. This is due to the fact that most businesses and organizations have a huge, primarily public infrastructure that comprises a variety of networks, technologies, hosting providers, and namespaces. Employee PCs, on-premises servers, workers’ private devices, cloud instances, or even the source code of current apps can all store information or data.
This is where today’s generation of open-source intelligence tools comes in. The OSINT API tools primarily serve three purposes:
Find publicly available assets: OSINT tools are most commonly used to assist IT teams in locating publicly available assets and the information they contain.
Locating relevant information outside of the organization: Another role of open source intelligence tools is to locate important information outside of one’s own organization, such as on social media platforms or domains. Large organizations that are integrating new IT assets as part of corporate acquisitions are likely to be interested in this feature. Given the explosive rise of social media platforms, it makes it logical for every company to check for critical information beyond its walls.
Compile recognized data in a useful manner: Some OSINT programs may compile data and provide it in an actionable fashion. In the event of a major corporation, an OSINT scan can provide hundreds of thousands of results, especially if both internal and external sources are used.
Why do we need OSINT Tools?
It’s one thing to discover that the data is available. The second step is to collect the data, and the third step is to analyze or extract intelligence from it. Manual data collection is also possible, but it will consume time that may be better used in later phases. The OSINT Social Scanner API can let us collect data from hundreds of websites in minutes, making the data collecting process much easier. One method is to use an open source application that is connected to more websites than we can recall and verifies the presence of the usernames on all of them at the same time. This operation takes only a few seconds with the Social Scanner Tool. Use a variety of techniques to collect any target-related data that can be connected and analyzed.
List of Some of the Best Open Source Intelligence Tools
Appropriate open-source intelligence tools can assist enhance your IT security level by bringing to light information about your organization, workers, IT assets, or other sensitive assets that could be abused by malevolent attackers: You may dramatically lower the danger of harmful behavior from phishing to denial-of-service attacks by locating such information before attackers do. There are other Social Media Links Scraper and Categorizations APIs accessible on the internet, but the Social Scanner API appears to be the most popular and should meet all of your requirements. We’ve highlighted some of the top open-source intelligence tools, as well as their unique features
1. Social Scanner API
The Social Scanner API is a simple application that lets you scan the most prominent social media networks (as well as other websites) for the presence of users’ usernames. Social media is a massive data repository that may be utilized for a variety of purposes, such as predicting future trends, tracking audience interests and actions, and so on. This process may be easily automated by using web scrapers to provide structured data that can be examined. Social Scanner crawls social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as other well-known websites, collecting unstructured data and storing it in an organized way. This social media data may then be analyzed for a variety of reasons. The analysis and public extracted information from this OSINT tool could help in investigating profiles related to suspicious or malicious activities such as cyberbullying, cybergrooming, cyberstalking, and spreading misinformation.
You may use the Social Scanner API to look for any person and get their username as well as a link to their profile. In less than 30 seconds, it returns results in JSON format. Other capabilities, such as category-based searches, are expected to be added in the near future. Facebook, GitHub, Reddit, and Twitter are among the 20 most popular social networks supported by the Social Scanner API. The Social Scanner API actually has the capacity to search 996 websites for more detailed investigations. You can use the Social Scanner API for free if you make less than 1,000 queries per month. The Social Scanner API comes with easy-to-understand documentation and other helpful tools to help you integrate it quickly and easily.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLQbhOuXqM0&t=95s
2. Searchcode
If you’re truly interested in learning more about OSINT, searchcode is a highly specialized search engine that scours source code for valuable data. As a result, software engineers may find and solve issues before the program is released. Of course, any tool that works with source code needs a bit more expertise than a basic Google search but the inventor of searchcode has gone to great lengths to make his OSINT tool’s interface as simple as possible. The user types in his or her search query, and searchcode returns the results as appropriate markers in the source code. User identities, security flaws, undesired active functions (like re-compile), and even unusual characters that might be utilized in code injection attacks can all be discovered this way.
3. Metagoofil
Metagoofil is also accessible on the GitHub platform for free. This free OSINT tool is used to extract metadata from publicly available documents. The OSINT tool sets have no restrictions on the kind of document, whether it is a pdf, doc, ppt, or XLs file. Metagoofil produces an astounding quantity of fascinating data. In a matter of seconds, you may discover the user names associated with specific documents. The OSINT tool also offers details on the precise path that leads to the data. As a result, it’s simple to get to conclusions regarding the company’s server names, shared resources, and directory structures. Almost all of the information provided by Metagoofil would be beneficial to a criminal hacker. Organizations and businesses, on the other hand, can utilize the open source intelligence tool to seek down and secure or conceal this information before possible criminals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ss4CPrt0WY
4. Mitaka
This browser-based search engine for IP addresses, domains, URLs, hashes, ASNs, Bitcoin wallet addresses, and a variety of other “Indicators of Compromise” is accessible as a Chrome extension or a Firefox add-on. The procedure includes six separate search engines. Mitaka also provides a convenient shortcut to a variety of internet databases that may be searched with a single click. Sputnik, an alternate extension, is available for people who desire something less thorough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaVsdopP7Tw
5. Intelligence X
Intelligence X is a search engine and archive service that saves not just past versions of websites but also leaked data sets for all time. This information can be beneficial or helpful in a variety of ways, not just for journalists, security researchers, and analysts.
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6. Recon-ng
Recon-ng is a multi-layered OSINT tool designed for Python software developers. The user interface is quite similar to Metasploit, which considerably reduces the learning curve for experienced Metasploit users. Developers may start to work almost immediately thanks to an interactive help function (which is missing in many Python modules). This includes the automated processing of time-intensive and repeated OSINT operations in the instance of Recon-ng. This allows more time for tasks that must be completed manually. The OSINT tool provides a modular design with several integrated functions to guarantee that even Python newbies can deal with Recon-ng. Common duties include standardizing output, interfacing with databases, generating web queries, and managing API keys. Developers don’t have to program Recon-ng in a complicated method; instead, they can pick the features they require and put up an automated module in a matter of minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68rRliy5DBw
7. Grep.app
How can you filter through 500,000 Git repositories? Grep.app is the most effective and efficient method. Twitter users and journalists recently utilized the OSINT tool to track how many repositories used the Codecov Bash uploader. Grep.app may also be used to find strings associated with IOCs, malicious code, or malware.
8. BuiltWith
BuiltWith, as the name implies, allows you to discover what platforms prominent websites were built on (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and so on) and learn more about them. This might include a list of a website’s JavaScript/CSS libraries, for example. In addition, you may get knowledge about plugins, frameworks, servers, analytics, and tracking. Wappalyzer, a leaner OSINT tool, may be preferable if you simply want to view information on the tech stack behind a website.
9. Maltego
This OSINT tool is used to uncover web-based networks of links between persons, corporations, domains, and publicly available information. Maltego presents the results in the form of beautiful graphs and diagrams, with the ability to incorporate up to 10,000 data points. At the push of a button, Maltego searches a variety of public data sources. DNS requests, search engines, and social media sites are examples of this. Almost any data source with a publicly accessible interface may be used with the program. The OSINT tool joins the data and offers information about the hidden relationships between names, e-mail addresses, corporations, websites, and other information after the data gathering is complete. Maltego operates consistently on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux systems since it is Java-based.
10. DarkSearch.io
DarkSearch.io is a wonderful place to start for novices to the dark web. The subterranean search engine is free, and it also has a free API for automated searches. To use DarkSearch.io, you don’t even require the Tor browser; the search engine works in any ordinary browser.
11. TinEye
TinEye is a reverse image search tool, unlike the other OSINT technologies we’ve explored so far. It can assist in the moderation of online material as well as the detection of brand-related fraud. Furthermore, TinEye may be used by teams to track where such photographs appear online.
Conclusion
Every hacker attack does not have to be an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) or employ especially complex techniques. The path of least resistance is likewise preferred by criminal hackers. After all, it’s useless to spend months compromising systems when all of the required data is available through publicly accessible channels. All of the tools on this page are free to use, while some of them need registration or have more capabilities in the premium version.
OSINT technologies can assist businesses in determining what information about their networks, data, and users is publicly available. The aim is to locate this information as soon as possible before it is exploited.
