Tools & Software

The following Tools & Software are commonly used by OSINT investigators.

Many of these are discussed, and used, in our courses.

All of these are posted with the understanding that:

  • We do not endorse any particular software or tool,
  • We do not benefit financially from any of the tools or software listed below,
  • All tools and software are subject to change,
  • You use these tools, and software, at your own risk.

 
 

Browsers
  • Brave – The privacy web browser.
  • Tor Browser – The Tor browser downloads to your desktop and uses the Tor network to protect your privacy online.

 
 

Documents
  • FOCA – (Fingerprinting Organizations with Collected Archives) is a tool used mainly to find metadata and hidden information in the documents its scans. These documents may be on web pages, and can be downloaded and analyzed with FOCA.

 
 

Email

For a complete list of ALL email programs and how to expose their email headers: Who@

 
 

Images
  • ExifTool – ExifTool is a platform-independent Perl library plus a command-line application for reading, writing and editing meta information in a wide variety of files. ExifTool supports many different metadata formats including EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, JFIF, GeoTIFF, ICC Profile, Photoshop IRB, FlashPix, AFCP and ID3, Lyrics3, as well as the maker notes of many digital cameras by Canon, Casio, DJI, FLIR, FujiFilm, GE, GoPro, HP, JVC/Victor, Kodak, Leaf, Minolta/Konica-Minolta, Motorola, Nikon, Nintendo, Olympus/Epson, Panasonic/Leica, Pentax/Asahi, Phase One, Reconyx, Ricoh, Samsung, Sanyo, Sigma/Foveon and Sony.
  • Faststone – The company offers four free tools for capturing, and analyzing, images.
  • GreenShot – Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows.
  • SnagIt – Snagit lets you quickly capture your screen, add additional context, and easily share with coworkers.

 
 

Privacy
  • Just Get My Data – A directory of direct links for you to obtain your data from web services.
  • Secure Messaging Apps – Secure Messaging Apps Comparison.
  • Tails – Tails is a “stand alone live cd” that uses the Tor network to protect your privacy online and help you avoid censorship.
  • Tor Browser – The Tor browser downloads to your desktop and uses the Tor network to protect your privacy online.

 
 

Report Tools
  • Hunchly – The Web Capture Tool Designed For Online Investigations. Hunchly automatically collects, documents, and annotates every web page you visit.
  • XMind – XMind, a full-featured mind mapping and brainstorming tool, designed to generate ideas, inspire creativity, brings efficiency both in work and life.
  • Faststone – The company offers four free tools for capturing, and analyzing, images.
  • GreenShot – Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows.
  • SnagIt – Snagit lets you quickly capture your screen, add additional context, and easily share with coworkers.

 
 

Social Media
  • Mozdeh – A free Windows program that can gather tweets and run time series analyses of tweets for a topic of your choice, including sentiment analysis. Mozdeh works in conjunction with SentiStrength for the sentiment analysis.

 
 

Specialized Tools & Software

 
 

Utilities

 
 

VM’s
  • Kali Linux – Kali Linux is an open-source, Debian-based Linux distribution geared towards various information security tasks, such as Penetration Testing, Security Research, Computer Forensics and Reverse Engineering.
  • MAC VM – To be used with your favorite Virtual Machine.
  • Trace Labs OSINT VM – The Trace Labs team created a specialized OSINT VM specifically to bring together the most effective OSINT tools and customized scripts we saw being used during our Search Party CTF’s
  • Tsurugi – For Forensic and OSINT investigations.
  • VirtualBox

 
 

Websites
  • HTTrack – It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site’s relative link-structure.

 




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