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Exploring the Dark Side: OSINT Tools and Techniques for Unmasking Dark Web Operations

Exploring the Dark Side: OSINT Tools and Techniques for Unmasking Dark Web Operations

Jul 19, 2023 Cybersecurity / OSINT
On April 5, 2023, the FBI and Dutch National Police  announced the takedown of Genesis Market , one of the largest dark web marketplaces. The operation, dubbed "Operation Cookie Monster," resulted in the arrest of 119 people and the seizure of over $1M in cryptocurrency. You can read the FBI's warrant  here  for details specific to this case. In light of these events, I'd like to discuss how OSINT can assist with dark web investigations. The Dark Web's anonymity attracts a variety of users, from whistleblowers and political activists to cybercriminals and terrorists. There are several techniques that can be used to try and identify the individuals behind these sites and personas. Technical Vulnerabilities While not considered OSINT, there have been instances when technical vulnerabilities have existed in the technology used to host dark websites. These vulnerabilities may exist in the software itself or be due to misconfigurations, but they can sometimes revea
How to Set Up a Threat Hunting and Threat Intelligence Program

How to Set Up a Threat Hunting and Threat Intelligence Program

May 08, 2023 Threat Hunting / OSINT
Threat hunting is an essential component of your cybersecurity strategy. Whether you're getting started or in an advanced state, this article will help you ramp up your threat intelligence program. What is Threat Hunting? The cybersecurity industry is shifting from a reactive to a proactive approach. Instead of waiting for cybersecurity alerts and then addressing them, security organizations are now deploying red teams to actively seek out breaches, threats and risks, so they can be isolated. This is also known as "threat hunting."  Why is Threat Hunting Required? Threat hunting complements existing prevention and detection security controls. These controls are essential for mitigating threats. However, they are optimized for low false positive alerting. Hunt solutions, on the other hand, are optimized for low false negatives. This means that the anomalies and outliers that are considered false positives for detection solutions, are hunting solutions' leads, to b
How to Accelerate Vendor Risk Assessments in the Age of SaaS Sprawl

How to Accelerate Vendor Risk Assessments in the Age of SaaS Sprawl

Mar 21, 2024SaaS Security / Endpoint Security
In today's digital-first business environment dominated by SaaS applications, organizations increasingly depend on third-party vendors for essential cloud services and software solutions. As more vendors and services are added to the mix, the complexity and potential vulnerabilities within the  SaaS supply chain  snowball quickly. That's why effective vendor risk management (VRM) is a critical strategy in identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks to protect organizational assets and data integrity. Meanwhile, common approaches to vendor risk assessments are too slow and static for the modern world of SaaS. Most organizations have simply adapted their legacy evaluation techniques for on-premise software to apply to SaaS providers. This not only creates massive bottlenecks, but also causes organizations to inadvertently accept far too much risk. To effectively adapt to the realities of modern work, two major aspects need to change: the timeline of initial assessment must shorte
Free Facial Recognition Tool Can Track People Across Social Media Sites

Free Facial Recognition Tool Can Track People Across Social Media Sites

Aug 09, 2018
Security researchers at Trustwave have released a new open-source tool that uses facial recognition technology to locate targets across numerous social media networks on a large scale. Dubbed Social Mapper, the facial recognition tool automatically searches for targets across eight social media platforms, including—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, the Russian social networking site VKontakte, and China's Weibo and Douban—based on their names and pictures. The tool's creators claim they developed Social Mapper intelligence-gathering tool predominantly to help pen testers and red teamers with social engineering attacks. Although the searches of names and pictures can already be performed manually, Social Mapper makes it possible to automate such scans far faster and "on a mass scale with hundreds or thousands of individuals" at once. "Performing intelligence gathering online is a time-consuming process, it typically starts by attempting to
cyber security

Automated remediation solutions are crucial for security

websiteWing SecurityShadow IT / SaaS Security
Especially when it comes to securing employees' SaaS usage, don't settle for a longer to-do list. Auto-remediation is key to achieving SaaS security.
LinkedIn Hack Tool Exposes Users' Emails without Exploiting Any Vulnerability

LinkedIn Hack Tool Exposes Users' Emails without Exploiting Any Vulnerability

Apr 03, 2014
A Free Chrome, Firefox and Safari web browser plugin floating around the web, called ' Sell Hack ' allows users to view the hidden email address of any LinkedIn user, means anyone can grab email addresses that we use for professional purposes. When installed, the ' Sell Hack ' plugin will pop up a ' Hack In ' button on LinkedIn profiles and further automatically mines email addresses of LinkedIn users. NOT A SECURITY BREACH It's not a Security breach, LinkedIn has confirmed that no LinkedIn data has been compromised, but rather this free extension rely on an algorithm that checks publicly available data in order to guess users' email addresses. So without exploiting any loophole or vulnerability, Sell Hack is capable of predicting users' email addresses with OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) techniques i.e. information collected from publicly available sources. It is also possible that, the Sell Hack extension is gathering data from
U.S. Department of Defense Officials are potential target of cyber espionage via social networking sites

U.S. Department of Defense Officials are potential target of cyber espionage via social networking sites

May 16, 2013
In the recent months I had the opportunity to conduct an interesting study on the use of Social Media in the Military Sector, large diffusion of media platforms makes them very attractive for governments and intelligence agencies . Social media platforms reveal enormous potentiality that could be exploited also in critical sectors such as military and defense. Modern social media networks are actively used by every government, the US, China and Russia are the most active in this field, but also emerging cyber countries like Iran and North Korea demonstrates an increasing interest in the matter. The principal uses of social media for government are Psychological Operations (PsyOps) OSInt Cyber espionage Offensive purposes On May 10th the Illinois Air National Guard 183rd Fighter Wing published a notice in the monthly issue of a newsletter titled Falcon View. The notice, that seems to be authentic, dedicates a paragraph to the use of social networking sites for
Patriot Hacker 'The Jester' list his all time favorite Open Source Intelligence toolset

Patriot Hacker 'The Jester' list his all time favorite Open Source Intelligence toolset

Oct 26, 2012
Most of the readers have question in mind that, How hackers know everything about their target ? How to DOX (finding personal information) someone ? So answer is --  Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). A Patriot Hacker ' The Jester ' (or "th3j35t3r") who made his name after harassing Anonymous activist group, disrupting WikiLeaks and stalking "jihadist" sites has finally list his all time favorite Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) toolset. Open Source intelligence (OSINT) is a form of intelligence collection management that involves finding, selecting, and acquiring information from publicly available sources and analyzing it to produce actionable intelligence. Hacker posted list of some free available tools on his blog , includes Maltego, Creepy, Spokeo, CaseFile, FoxOne Scanner (Jester's Edition). OSINT is defined by both the U.S. Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Department of Defense, as " produced from publicly available information that is coll
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