Maltego’s master list of important OSINT resources is updated for 2022!
Learning how to use open source intelligence for investigations is a never ending road. Luckily, there are many who have traveled the same way and shared their footsteps.
Celebrating Cybersecurity Awareness Month in 2021, we started OSINT October as a campaign to help both beginners and advanced practitioners brush up their OSINT skills. Every day, we shared OSINT tips, tools, and learning resources on our Twitter and LinkedIn.
Our group of experts collected, selected, and curated an extensive list of all the websites, blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, and books they recommend anyone interested in OSINT to consume.
We also spoke with three amazing women in OSINT—Katie Paxton-Fear, Oloyede Olajumoke Elizabeth, and Rae Baker—as well as industry experts and researchers who guest-starred in The Pivot Podcast and generously shared their top choices of OSINT resources.
We will share a few snippets of our OSINT learning material recommendations. If you want to receive the full list of over 100 websites, blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, and books for not only OSINT, but also for cybersecurity, cybercrime, and trust & safety insights, download the master collection now!
Top OSINT Websites, Podcasts, and Books for Beginners and Experts 🔗︎
7 OSINT Websites & Blogs You Must Know 🔗︎
These OSINT websites and blogs are your go-to places to learn about new OSINT trends, tools, case studies, and what is happening in the OSINT world:
- Hatless1der by Griffin: An active contributor to the OSINT community, Griffin shares real-life OSINT and GEOINT investigations as well as a useful list of tools and resources.
- Lorand Bodo: A multilingual analyst with a strong background in open source intelligence (OSINT), Lorand Bodo specializes in monitoring/analysing terrorist entities online, developing unique research methodologies for intelligence gathering, and finally, providing in-depth analysis on issues that matter.
- Offensive OSINT by Wojciech: Experienced systems engineer, pentester, and OSINT researcher, Wojciech writes specifically about offensive OSINT investigations, tools, methodologies, and analysis.
- OSINT Techniques: This site provides numerous free open source resources for researching and analyzing information. Although the information on this website is for anyone to use, it would be most helpful to those in investigative roles such as analysts and researchers.
- Secjuice: Secjuice features hundreds of articles on cybersecurity, OSINT guides and tutorials, interesting investigations, and many more technical and educational infosec topics written by individual contributors who are experts or enthusiasts in these fields.
- Week in OSINT Newsletter by Sector035: The Sector035 Newsletter, published every Monday, is a curated collection of #OSINT related talks, tips, tools, and handy websites for you to discover.
- Wondersmith Rae by Rae Baker: A well-known OSINT practitioner, author, and speaker, Rae Baker shares her insights, opinions, analysis, and investigations on interesting OSINT and infosec topics.
7 OSINT Podcasts You Must Listen To 🔗︎
These 7 OSINT podcasts cover practical OSINT use cases, research, techniques, and feature interviews:
- Breadcrumbs by Trace Labs: Trace Labs is a Canadian based non-profit specializing in the crowd sourcing of open source intelligence collection. In the Breadcrumbs podcast, Trace Labs explore the topics, techniques, and tools that relate to OSINT collection.
- Layer 8 Podcast by Layer 8 Conference: Layer 8 Conference is the first conference to be solely focused on social engineering and intelligence gathering. In each podcast, they feature a guest who tells their story about a social engineering engagement or an OSINT investigation, the way friends chat by a fireplace.
- The InfoSec & OSINT Show by Josh Amishav: The goal of the podcast is to share practical tips of what works and what doesn’t in information security. Essentially turning its guests’ wisdom into practical tips you can use to improve your own skills.
- The OSINT Bunker Podcast: Military news and defence podcast hosted by @DefenceGeek, @Osinttechnical, @air_intel and @KyleJGlen in collaboration with the UK Defence Journal.
- The OSINT Curious Project Podcast: The OSINT Curious Project is the OSINT-learning catalyst, a source of quality, actionable, OSINT news, original blogs, instructional videos, and a bi-weekly webcast/podcast. Most of all, they aim to inspire people to look outside of their OSINT-comfort zones and pursue their OSINT passions. They try to keep people curious about exploring web applications for bits of information or trying out new techniques to access important OSINT data.
- The Privacy, Security & OSINT Show by Michael Bazzell: This weekly podcast presents ideas to help you become digitally invisible, stay secure from cyber threats, and make you a better online investigator.
- The World of Intelligence by Janes: The World of Intelligence, run by Janes, delivers validated open source defense intelligence across four core capability areas: Threat, equipment, defense industry and country that are aligned with workflows across the defense industry, national security, and finally, government.
7 OSINT Books You Must Read 🔗︎
These 7 OSINT books are great-reads if you are looking for hands-on information, guidance, and disciplines about practicing OSINT and cybersecurity investigations and real-life stories of how these techniques are implemented:
- Cybersecurity Blue Team Toolkit by Nadean H Tanner: The Cybersecurity Blue Team Toolkit is an excellent resource for anyone working in digital policy as well as IT security professionals, technical analysts, program managers, and Chief Information and Technology Officers. This is one handbook that won’t gather dust on the shelf, but remain a valuable reference at any career level, from student to executive.
- Human Hacking by Christopher Hadnagy: A global security expert draws on psychological insights to help you master the art of social engineering—human hacking. Make friends, influence people, and leave them feeling better for having met you by being more empathetic, generous, and kind.
- Nowhere to Hide by Daniel Huang: Nowhere to Hide retraces the FBI’s investigative techniques—some using cutting-edge technology and others using old fashioned, knocking-on-doors detective work—used to pursue the hundreds of thousands of leads received from the general public. The book is filled with real-world case studies, specific resources and practical “how to” guides to equip both beginners and seasoned OSINT investigators with the right tools for their OSINT toolboxes.
- OSINT for the Staffing World by Dean Da Costa: A must-have for any high-level or experienced recruiter in this field to understand the most powerful recruiting tools available. Learn what they do, who should be using them, what they can use them for, and why they should be using the tools.
- Operator Handbook by Joshua Picolet: The Operator Handbook takes three disciplines (Red Team, OSINT, Blue Team) and combines them into one complete reference guide. The book contains 100+ individual cheat sheet references for many of the most frequently used tools and techniques by practitioners. Includes content to assist the most seasoned cybersecurity veteran or someone just getting started in the career field.
- Open Source Intelligence Handbook by Michael Bazzell: New online and offline search tools; a new Linux OSINT virtual machine; and tutorials to replicate all Linux OSINT tools within Mac and Windows operating systems. Brand-new search methods for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and others ensure you have the latest techniques within your online investigation arsenal. An entire section is devoted to Methodology, Workflow, Documentation, and Ethics which provides a clear game plan for your next active investigation.
- Practical Cyber Intelligence by Wilson Bautista: This book kicks off with the need for cyber intelligence and why it is required in terms of a defensive framework. It provides a practical explanation of the F3EAD protocol with the help of examples. Furthermore, we learn how to go about threat models and intelligence products/frameworks and apply them to real-life scenarios.
There’s More! Download Our 2022 Master Collection of 100+ OSINT & Infosec Resources Now 🔗︎
There are way more useful resources than we can show in this article to learn about OSINT, cybersecurity, cybercrime, and trust & safety investigation techniques.
If you want to receive the full list of over 100 websites, blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, books, and other resources to brush up your OSINT and infosec skills, download the master collection now!
Don’t see you favorite resource on the list? Send it over and we’ll make sure to add it!
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Happy OSINT!
