Top OSINT Reads To Kick Off 2023

We wanted to start the New Year with a piece for anyone who has resolved to sink their teeth into the OSINT sphere in 2023. So, welcome to our pick of the 6 best Social Links articles for getting up to speed with the open-source intelligence sphere!

Here, we’ll cover almost every area of OSINT application from law enforcement and military intelligence to cyber security and blockchain analysis. Reading these articles will not only give you a broad understanding of the OSINT landscape but will also arm you with practical solutions for a multitude of real-world tasks.

Let’s dive in!

Light in the Dark: How OSINT can Counter Crime on the Dark Web

The Dark Web has a big reputation yet is not widely understood. So, in this article we take a look at its controversial nature, exploring how it is structured, how it works, as well as why people use it. The Dark Web is known to allow users anonymity, which has apparently led to all kinds of notorious doings. We also discuss how watertight this perceived anonymity really is.

This piece comes at the Dark Web from various angles. Discover what onion routing and a specialized browser have in common, read about some of the crazy items that surface on the darknet, gain a view into the legality and ethics of the platform, and find out where OSINT fits into all of this, and how it can be used to combat illicit activities.

Extremism & Financial Fraud: How OSINT Can Rescue the Gaming World

When thinking about fraud, money laundering, and radicalism, the gaming sphere is probably not the first thing that springs to mind. And yet, the connection between these activities and gaming platforms is not only real, it is significant. Services such as Steam and Discord are open to misuse, and here we discuss the cause and nature of these issues, while offering solutions.

Extremism is a major problem surrounding these platforms, with impressionable people being radicalized or even recruited through the social connections made via gaming. Meanwhile, scams abound, and internal currencies are being used to launder money. In such a climate, OSINT tools are stepping to the fore as a major player in countering these issues.

The Wide-Ranging Uses of OSINT in Military Intelligence

OSINT is not as young as you might think – it was actually born way back during WWII as an alternative form of reconnaissance employed by the allies. This explains the military-sounding term ‘open-source intelligence’. Then once the digital age set in, OSINT began branching out into many more areas. However, it never drifted away from its roots: military intelligence.

In this article, we take a close look at the vital role OSINT plays in modern military strategies by providing a highly accurate and up-to-date picture of what is going on on the ground. And this doesn’t just refer to operations for combat scenarios, but also natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires, as well as forms of civil unrest such as rioting.

Using OSINT for Enhancing Cryptocurrency Investigations

While blockchains are no doubt a progressive form of technology with plenty of promising qualities, they also have a downside. Their decentralized nature, inconsistent regulation, and anonymous usability, have made cryptocurrencies the go-to payment system for all manner of cyber criminality.

This article delves into the underbelly of the crypto world: terrorist funding, financial fraud, and money laundering. But, more than that, it sheds light on how blockchains, which of course consist of open data, can be carefully unpicked and decoded using OSINT technologies. It turns out that cryptocurrencies are not as anonymous as cyber criminals would like to believe.

OSINT: A New Force in Cyber Security

As more and more aspects of human life get absorbed into the digital domain, cybercrime continues along a trajectory of unprecedented growth. To the extent that IBM has listed cybersecurity failure as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity today. And in the vanguard of the resistance? OSINT technologies.

This piece covers the ins and outs of the contemporary data security conundrum. We go into how extensive the issue actually is, who it’s affecting, what the major causes and influencing factors are (Covid didn’t help), and how exactly OSINT is being harnessed to counteract this global problem.

How OSINT Tools Have Become a Game Changer for the Law Enforcement Sector

All round the world, law enforcement agencies and intelligence bureaus are coming to recognize OSINT as an indispensable discipline. Every day, open data is bringing new insights to a wide range of investigations including organized crime, cybercrime, illicit trade, fraud and money laundering, to name but a few.

In this article, we go through the tools and techniques that are making all the difference in identifying criminal actors, and solving cases. From the analysis of social media, blockchains, and weak indicators, to digital footprinting and AI-driven search automation, OSINT brings a whole suite of solutions to the table.

That brings our round-up to a close, and we hope our OSINT articles will give you some fresh insights and inspiration for the year ahead.

To find out how Social Links links OSINT solutions can be harnessed to accomplish all of the above and more, check out the January edition of Unredacted magazine. This issue features SL Professional and discusses the many of the applications it can be used for.