Yuki's Blog

Open Source Intelligence

By Yuki Han in , ,
Open Source Intelligence

Open Source Intelligence is the act of finding and gathering information from public sources on a target. You’ll probably be surprised by the amount of information that can be found online with a bit of prodding! OSINT is great because it’s typically not very expensive and and can reveal a lot of information about a target. Even something as simple as checking a company’s posted job requirements for an open position can reveal what technologies and systems they use, which can help in finding a vulnerability. Something to watch out for, however, is fake information that may be posted.

Some OSINT strategies:

Google Dorking

Google dorking, also called Google Hacking, is a method of fine-tuning Google searches thorugh advanced query searches in order to filter out fluff. Here are some common commands:

Intext & allintext
Intext:usernames
allintext:"username" "password"

This command finds specific text. allintext is used to search multiple keywords.

Intitle & allintitle
intitle:"snapchat"
allintitle:"ip camera" "dvr"

This command filters results based off their HTML page title.

Inurl & allinurl
inurl:capitalone
allinurl:

This filters results based off the URL.
! Live cameras that aren’t IP address access restricted can be found by searching inurl:”view.shtml” “Network Camera”
! Zoom Bombs was a huge problem when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit, where users would go into random rooms (usually classrooms) and flood them with profanity, trash, etc. This search query can be used: inurl: zoom.us/j intext: scheduled for It should be noted, however, that the FBI put out a public warning regarding zoom bombing! Don’t do it.

Filetype
filetype:log
filetype:txt

This command filters files by their filetype. An easy way to find email lists would be to search filetype: txt inurl:”email.txt” or Site: .com filetype: csv inurl: email.csv

Ext
site: https://rit.edu ext:pdf

The extension command is similar to filetype and allows users to narrow down searches to a specific extension type.

Site
site: https://rit.edu

The site command allows users to narrow down searches to a specific website.

In addition, commands can be combined.

For example, this command searches for “admin_password” in all three types TXT, LOG, and CFG:

"admin_password" ext:txt |ext:log | ext:cfg


Metadata

Metadata is essentially data about data. It’s information that gives additional information about a file such as the author, date created, GPS coordinates, phone model, etc. Metadata can be found in most file types and can be viewed using a third party program, viewing properties from file manager, or the strings command in Linux.

Reverse Image Searching

Ever had an image file and wanted to know where it’s from, what exactly it is, or find similar ones? I know I have. You can perform a reverse image search where your image will be searched against online databases to find similar ones. Google Images supports reverse image searching.

OSINT: Common Tools

Open source intelligence has many common tools that are helpful. Here’s a consolidated list from Cyber Skyline Live - Open Source Intelligence Basics:

Share: Twitter Facebook
Yuki Han's Picture

About Yuki Han

Yuki is a curious college student who wants to take a deep dive into information security.

CA, USA https://yukisbitsandbytes.github.io

Comments