Free OSINT Resources

Open Source Intelligence, or OSINT for short, is a wide ranging skillset which leverages multiple disciplines, methods and sources for collecting and analysing data accessible via publically available sources. Its leveraged by the intelligence communities, military, corporate and financial researchers, and average every day people. Simply googling my LinkedIn profile to discover if I’m competent enough to discuss the matter would be an example of OSINT.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

My goal with this article is to curate a list of the best freely accessible tools, training & educational resources, and demos to empower all those learning, honing and continuously developing their OSINT skillsets and toolkits, be they to compliment their existing penetration testing abilities, move towards a Priviate Investigator career, or just to scratch that itch, knowledge wise.

The majority of these resources I’ve found via Twitter, directly from GitHub, or via recommendations from courses or colleagues. In short, via basic OSINT methods. If you like this content, or have found it helpful, please hit the “clap” button. You can give me up to 50 claps for free, and it’ll go a long way to helping my articles reach wider audiences. Also, please, if you feel I’ve left something out, or would like to add your experiences or perspective on any of the below resources, please feel free to comment at the end of the article. I warmly welcome constructive feedback.

I will also include some affiliate links, marked LikedThis¹, which link to the best books I have found on various hacking-related topics. These are books I own, use, and have found to be particularly helpful in learning and applying the relevant skillsets. I hope you also find them as useful.

Foundational Understanding of IT:

Though its not totally necessary, if you want a career that includes delivering OSINT reports to clients within a technology perspective, ie: red team engagements, it helps to have secured your foundational understanding of networking and host technologies, so at least have the content of the CompTIA A+, Network+ and Security+ covered. Honestly, hands down the best please to cover these courses for free is via the free online training provided www.professormesser.com