OSINT
Open-source research
OSINT means collecting information from public sources and reporting it in a way that can be checked. This is the main starting point for beginners.
First steps
- Write the research question in one sentence.
- Check primary and official sources first.
- Keep findings, interpretation, and assumptions separate.
- Verify important points with at least two sources.
Limits
- Do not try to access closed systems.
- Do not collect private personal data without a clear reason.
- Do not present one source as final proof.
What this field covers
A quick scope view.
Search and source discovery
Web archive checks
Official-record review
Evidence logging
Short reporting
Related source collections
Good places to start in this field.
Search and meta-search
Bing
Microsoft search engine with useful image, video, news, and regional result features.
Open sourceSearch and meta-search
Brave Search
Independent web search index that can surface results missed by larger search providers.
Open sourceWeb history and archives
BuiltWith
Technology profiler and historical technology lookup for websites.
Open sourceReporting templates
CISA Report Cyber Issues
Official CISA page for reporting cyber incidents, phishing, vulnerabilities, and malware.
Open sourceWeb history and archives
Common Crawl
Open web crawl corpus used for large-scale research and historical analysis.
Open sourceGovernment and official datasets
data.europa.eu
Official European data portal aggregating EU and member-state open datasets.
Open source