How to find real targets for OSINT.

OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) refers to the practice of collecting intelligence information using publicly available information or sources like social media, forums, breached data, metadata and search results. It is been there from quite a long time and has vast area of application be it terrorist identification, crime analysis or reconnaissance for ethical hacking.

This field requires a lot of practice but the real issue with the field of OSINT is the lack of targets for practice and most probably you are here for the same reason too. This article will be solving that, it can be done in two ways.

1. Pre made pratice exercises

Like every other field there are some practice exercises for OSINT too. Where you have to solve pre given exercises using your OSINT skills. Here is a curated list of some websites.

Don't forget to bookmark them. Order is random.

• Sector 035 : Level wise challenges in form of quizzes.
• Sourcing games : Will surely make you addict.
• Belling Cat : Famous in OSINT field.
• Sofia Santos : A big library of exercises
• FreeOsint.org : Module type learning
• Osint Exercises by Yanis : Project is under expansion. All the best to dev.

This was a list of exercises you can practice they are very helpful for every level be it a beginner or advanced. If you are just getting into this field those 6 websites are more than enough for you. But make sure you try your best in solving them. OSINT requires a lot of patience most of the times you will end up clueless but always remember it isn't the end. Practice hard.

These all exercises are pre made and lack the real world challenge (This nowhere means that they are not useful.). In real world you will not have hints or clear pictures. For that you need to practice on real world targets. Here are two ways

2. OSINT FOR GOOD

This is an initiative where users use their OSINT skills to solve real world case. It is altruistic, non profit work where people come up together and use OSINT against criminals, bad actors and all. For more info refer to #OSINTFORGOOD article.
There are again two ways to do it.

• Joining communities
• Solo Investigation

2.1 Joining communities

There are multiple communities which provide real world cases to OSINT practitioners. This helps in solving real world cases like searching missing people, finding a crime location or identifying a criminal. Your privacy is valued and no information about you is made public. In other words you act as a detective who anonymously helps law enforcements and non profits. Here is a list of some platforms you can try

• Trace Labs – Crowdsourced OSINT for missing persons
• Innocent Lives Foundation – Identifying online predators
• Europol – Participate in public image/geolocation analysis
• Locate International – Cold case OSINT assistance

2.2. The MKITOS Way

We all know there are more miscreants on social media than anywhere else. We all come across content that we know shouldn't be out there be it harassing or vulgar comments, manipulative or non consensual content. And surely we just want to remove it, right? Here comes the MKITOS way. Why not just use your OSINT skills on those miscreants? The real issue was lack of targets only, so why not use all these wrongdoers as your target?

If you think the same just go and surf the internet as you do. Find those miscreants, use your OSINT skills, track them and report them to social media platforms or your country's cybercrime portal.

If you want you can check out CTRL. ALT. ACT. which is a 4 week module designed to use OSINT skills to target wrongdoer social media accounts and shady websites.