OSINT: Open Source Intelligence
May 2022
Open source intelligence has received increasing attention over the past few years. This article shows examples of OSINT applications both for the public benefit and with malicious purposes and notes the importance of having an ethical frame of reference when conducting OSINT investigations.
Have you ever looked yourself up on Google? See what kind of results appear? If you have done so… Congratulations! You may be considered an amateur OSINT investigator. But what exactly does this term mean? OSINT is the acronym for Open Source Intelligence and refers to the knowledge exploited from publicly and legally accessible sources to address a specific intelligence requirement. In other words, OSINT is all the information gathered from public spaces such as a Facebook page, a post on Twitter, and an article in a newspaper. OSINT is mainly free, but not always, and comprises both the physical and the cyber realm.