OSINT Tools for Infosec Investigations
05/07/2022
OSINT, short for Open Source Intelligence, is any information/data that can be found using free available sources for the purpose of investigation. If you are familiar with the term then you will likely already know the value of that skillset. If you have never heard the term then I highly recommend learning what you can about it and getting familiar. There are a lot of resources available in the Free Resources section of my website. Just look under the "Digital Forensics/Investigations/OSINT" drop down. If you are willing to spend some money I would recommend the Open Source Intelligence Techniques book by Michael Bazzell or the Open-Source Intelligence Fundamentals course by TCM Security.
Below is a small collection of tools that can be used as a starting place in an investigation. You can get a lot of information about IP addresses, domains, URLs, file hashes and much more. I use many of these tools in my job and personal life. Hopefully you find something useful here as well.
I should also mention that not everything lasts forever including websites. As I went to publish this page I tested all the links and one of the tools I was going to share was just gone. The link redirected to something new and unrelated. If for whatever reason any of these links no longer go to the page described, use one of the search engines below to help you find an alternative.
URLs and Domains
Where Goes - URL Redirect Checker
ICANN’s Registration Data Lookup Tool
Virus Total - Analyze suspicious URLs
Virus Total - Analyze suspicious domains
urlscan.io - A sandbox for the web
URL Void - Website Reputation Checker
Any Run - Interactive Malware Hunting
IP Address
Virus Total - Analyze suspicious IPs
Hashes
Virus Total - Analyze suspicious hashes
Team Cymru - Malware Hash Registry
Emails
Epieos - Email Information Finder
Email Hippo - Email Verification Tool
Usernames
Name Checkup - Find Available Username
Internet Archive
MAC address
Search Engines
Image Search
Video Search
DNS
Meta Data
Jeffrey's Image Metadata Viewer