When I first started creating software for the Commodore Amiga demo scene many many moons ago I did so with two friends known as Mythos and Wraith.
Between us we wrote code, created graphical artwork and digital music, which we assembled into productions known as intros and demos. It lasted a few years then we went our separate ways. I continued for a few more years with other groups of individuals before hanging up my scener hat altogether.
I started wondering what they are up to today, how did their lives turn out? Did they end up with a career in technology as I did, or switch to something else? Are they married with kids? Are they even still alive?
I toyed with the idea of utilising OSINT to track them down so I could answer these questions and maybe even say hi. I can’t remember their real names, only their aliases, but I still have all my Amiga files and a copy of WinUAE, so digging out their names and addresses from back then shouldn’t be too difficult. From there I could use public info and social media to hopefully locate them today.
But why? To see if I could? To satisfy a passing nostalgic thought?
I’ve come to realise recently that people come and go. Throughout your life friends and acquaintances will come into your life, stay a while, then move on. And that’s ok. We are not meant to hold on to everyone we meet, forever, despite Facebook’s original business model. You as a person will change and develop and what connected you to someone at one point in time may no longer be a part of you and if you were to meet that person today you may find that you have nothing in common and would not be friends.
I decided to move on and not dwell on the past. To be thankful for the good times and the memories and to look to the future. Leaving the past in the past.
To Mythos and Wraith I wish you the best wherever you are.
Tag: OSINT
OSINT yourself
When learning anything new, knowing where to start can prove a challenge. Do you pay for a course, buy a book, or maybe look online?
With OSINT I recommend starting with yourself. Imagine you are an in-house digital private detective hired by yourself to investigate, well, yourself. Maybe you are about to apply for a high-profile job or are about to be security vetted for some reason. Either way, the client, you, wants to know what information is out there in the wide world about you.
OSINT stands for Open Source INTelligence and relates to the accessing of freely available information sources in order to process the data retrieved in order to obtain some form of intelligence, in this case learning what information is available about your subject online. The subject being you.
It’s a great way to learn OSINT techniques and it can be both fun and illuminating. Good or bad, whatever you find will be useful. If you find good things that you are happy to be out there then great. If you find bad things then at least you now know about them and can do something about them.
Start with search engines like Google. Search for all variations of your name. If you find images of yourself, paste them into reverse image search engines to see where else they may appear. Log and record everything you find. URLs, images, text, everything. Map out your findings and follow every lead. Leave no stone unturned. Your job as an OSINT investigator is to find everything about your client that is publicly available.
Carry out web searches for OSINT tools and techniques. Have a play with the tools as part of your endeavour. Note what is useful and what is not. Start creating your own playbook and make lots of notes. The deeper you dive the more you learn.
Take your time, don’t rush things. Learn how to look up company information, property details, employment history, social network accounts, and so on.
Search for report templates and create something that suits you. Write up your findings with recommendations.
Congratulations! You just got started in OSINT and you had fun doing it. You learned new tools and techniques and you also learned what information about you is freely available. Now action any recommendations and run a periodic check. Plus sign up to OSINT groups, newsletters, and websites and keep learning!
Big faceless organisations
I miss the days before the internet sometimes. Especially when dealing with companies. They think they are being efficient dealing with customers only through the web or an app, using AI agents to deal with enquiries and having complex digital complaints procedures.
Once they have your money and you experience problems with their product or service, good luck reaching an actual human to talk to. Or getting your money back.
If you are an IT geek though you might have a chance. I’ve managed to talk to humans and get my money back on several occasions, but it took a bunch of skills that the average person just doesn’t have such as:
– Understanding how web pages work and reading the page source
– OSINT
– How to hack AI
– Side-channels
– Exploiting software bugs
It shouldn’t require a degree in IT in order to get decent customer service but that’s been my experience.
Using OSINT to locate old friends
As you get better at OSINT you start to wonder what else you can do with these skills. Like maybe locating old friends.
I’m not talking about stalking here, to be clear. I’m talking about seeing if you can use OSINT to research an old friend to see what they are up to and if they are ok. Maybe you worked with someone day in and day out twenty years ago and you haven’t heard from them in decades. Are they ok, what are they up to these days? Not to say hi but just to know that they are ok and doing well.
I’ve worked with many people for many years and on occasion I often wonder what they are up to and if they are well. Using OSINT you may just obtain the answer. Hopefully a positive one.
OSINT, reconnecting people.
OSINT NOW
When it comes to finding information about a company that is not publicly available, LinkedIn can be your friend. A while back I had subscribed to NOW – formerly NOW TV, a division of SKY TV in the UK – and I wanted to know more about the technology they were using, but there was nothing returned using search engines. That’s when I decided to use OSINT with LinkedIn. OSINT, or Open Source INTelligence is a research method using publicly available sources, in this case LinkedIn.
Most employees sign contracts or NDAs that state that they will not discuss what they do for a particular employer, but that doesn’t prevent them from advertising their skills and experience to help them secure future employment.
Searching LinkedIn for keywords such as “Now TV” revealed a who’s who of the team working at NOW presently and in the past. Front-end and back-end developers, database admins, project managers, etc. It was a data-mine of information on the technologies being used. I also saw references to “Roku”, which I learned was the hardware manufacturer of the NOW TV stick. There was also mention of a project called peacock, which I discerned as a streaming platform in the US for NBC. It appeared that both the NOW and Peacock teams were working on shared technology. All of this information was not publicly available but could be obtained with just a few brief searches on LinkedIn.
Most employees sign contracts or NDAs that state that they will not discuss what they do for a particular employer, but that doesn’t prevent them from advertising their skills and experience to help them secure future employment.
Searching LinkedIn for keywords such as “Now TV” revealed a who’s who of the team working at NOW presently and in the past. Front-end and back-end developers, database admins, project managers, etc. It was a data-mine of information on the technologies being used. I also saw references to “Roku”, which I learned was the hardware manufacturer of the NOW TV stick. There was also mention of a project called peacock, which I discerned as a streaming platform in the US for NBC. It appeared that both the NOW and Peacock teams were working on shared technology. All of this information was not publicly available but could be obtained with just a few brief searches on LinkedIn.