OSINT – OSINT stands for open source intelligence, which refers to any information that can legally be gathered from free, public sources about an individual or organization. In practice, that tends to mean information found on the internet, but technically any public information falls into the category of OSINT whether it’s books or reports in a public library, articles in a newspaper or statements in a press release.
So, it’s basically internet research? Not really. It’s not like searching articles on a topic, such as Climate Change, and writing a paper. It’s about finding information and documents about people and places… You have a photo and you want the persons name and phone number, or you want to know where that photo was taken. You want to know where someone lives and works, etc. Or, maybe you want information about a company, government official… OR, maybe you are security conscious and want to know what kind of information can be found on you.
Hackers use OSINT to prepare attacks on target networks. A security minded company should know what information about their networks is out there. Terrorist uses OSINT to plan attacks on places, people, and companies. It’s probably a good idea to know what information is out there that they can use. Perhaps you want to know if confidential information about your company has been leaked.
We can locate and track ships and airplanes, identify the location of a photo. I saw a demo where an OSINT pro took a photo of a person and found his passport number (I probably wouldn’t do that but it would be good for you to know if I can get yours).