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# Emacs temporary files
*~
\#*\#
.\#*

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---
title: "{{ replace .Name "-" " " | title }}"
date: {{ .Date }}
draft: true
---

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baseurl = "/"
languageCode = "en-us"
theme = "terminal"
paginate = 10
publishdir = "/srv/www/htdocs/infopunk/"
[params]
# dir name of your main content (default is `content/posts`).
# the list of set content will show up on your index page (baseurl).
# contentTypeName = "content/about"
# ["orange", "blue", "red", "green", "pink"]
themeColor = "green"
# if you set this to 0, only submenu trigger will be visible
showMenuItems = 5
# show selector to switch language
showLanguageSelector = false
# set theme to full screen width
fullWidthTheme = true
# center theme with default width
centerTheme = false
# if your resource directory contains an image called `cover.(jpg|png|webp)`,
# then the file will be used as a cover automatically.
# With this option you don't have to put the `cover` param in a front-matter.
autoCover = true
# set post to show the last updated
# If you use git, you can set `enableGitInfo` to `true` and then post will automatically get the last updated
showLastUpdated = true
# set a custom favicon (default is a `themeColor` square)
# favicon = "favicon.ico"
# Provide a string as a prefix for the last update date. By default, it looks like this: 2020-xx-xx [Updated: 2020-xx-xx] :: Author
# updatedDatePrefix = "Updated"
# set all headings to their default size (depending on browser settings)
# oneHeadingSize = true # default
# whether to show a page's estimated reading time
# readingTime = false # default
# whether to show a table of contents
# can be overridden in a page's front-matter
#Toc = true # default
# set title for the table of contents
# can be overridden in a page's front-matter
# TocTitle = "Table of Contents" # default
[params.twitter]
# set Twitter handles for Twitter cards
# see https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/optimize-with-cards/guides/getting-started#card-and-content-attribution
# do not include @
creator = ""
site = ""
[languages]
[languages.en.params]
languageName = "English"
title = "the infopunk"
#subtitle = "A simple, retro theme for Hugo"
owner = ""
keywords = ""
copyright = "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License."
menuMore = "Show more"
readMore = "Read more"
readOtherPosts = "Read other posts"
newerPosts = "Newer posts"
olderPosts = "Older posts"
missingContentMessage = "Page not found..."
missingBackButtonLabel = "Back to home page"
[languages.en.params.logo]
logoText = "the infopunk"
logoHomeLink = "/"
[languages.en.menu]
[[languages.en.menu.main]]
identifier = "blog"
name = "Blog"
url = "/posts"
[[languages.en.menu.main]]
identifier = "misc"
name = "Misc"
url = "/tags/misc/"
[[languages.en.menu.main]]
identifier = "osint"
name = "OSINT"
url = "/tags/osint/"
[[languages.en.menu.main]]
identifier = "tech"
name = "Tech"
url = "/tags/tech/"
[[languages.en.menu.main]]
identifier = "about"
name = "About"
url = "/about"

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baseurl = "/"
languageCode = "en-us"
theme = "terminal"
paginate = 10
publishdir = "/srv/www/htdocs/infopunk/"
[params]
# dir name of your main content (default is `content/posts`).
# the list of set content will show up on your index page (baseurl).
# contentTypeName = "about"
# ["orange", "blue", "red", "green", "pink"]
themeColor = "green"
# if you set this to 0, only submenu trigger will be visible
showMenuItems = 5
# show selector to switch language
showLanguageSelector = false
# set theme to full screen width
fullWidthTheme = true
# center theme with default width
centerTheme = false
# if your resource directory contains an image called `cover.(jpg|png|webp)`,
# then the file will be used as a cover automatically.
# With this option you don't have to put the `cover` param in a front-matter.
autoCover = true
# set post to show the last updated
# If you use git, you can set `enableGitInfo` to `true` and then post will automatically get the last updated
showLastUpdated = false
# set a custom favicon (default is a `themeColor` square)
# favicon = "favicon.ico"
# Provide a string as a prefix for the last update date. By default, it looks like this: 2020-xx-xx [Updated: 2020-xx-xx] :: Author
# updatedDatePrefix = "Updated"
# set all headings to their default size (depending on browser settings)
# oneHeadingSize = true # default
# whether to show a page's estimated reading time
# readingTime = false # default
# whether to show a table of contents
# can be overridden in a page's front-matter
#Toc = true # default
# set title for the table of contents
# can be overridden in a page's front-matter
# TocTitle = "Table of Contents" # default
[params.twitter]
# set Twitter handles for Twitter cards
# see https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/optimize-with-cards/guides/getting-started#card-and-content-attribution
# do not include @
creator = ""
site = ""
[languages]
[languages.en]
languageName = "English"
title = "theinfopunk.com"
#subtitle = "A simple, retro theme for Hugo"
owner = ""
keywords = ""
copyright = "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License."
menuMore = "Show more"
readMore = "Read more"
readOtherPosts = "Read other posts"
newerPosts = "Newer posts"
olderPosts = "Older posts"
missingContentMessage = "Page not found..."
missingBackButtonLabel = "Back to home page"
[languages.en.params.logo]
logoText = "theinfopunk.com"
logoHomeLink = "/"
[languages.en.menu]
[[languages.en.menu.main]]
identifier = "life"
name = "Life"
url = "/Life"
[[languages.en.menu.main]]
identifier = "osint"
name = "OSINT"
url = "/OSINT"
[[languages.en.menu.main]]
identifier = "tech"
name = "Tech"
url = "/Tech"
[[languages.en.menu.main]]
identifier = "about"
name = "About"
url = "/about"

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---
title: "CTF Notes"
date: 2022-09-25T17:45:19+02:00
draft: false
---
There are a number of CTF Games for OSINT enthusiasts designed to help focus search and critical thinking skills. The purpose of these pages is for me to talk my way through how I worked through some of these CTF challenges. Being that I'm a newbie, there may have been easier/more direct ways to work through the challenges presented in the CTFs.
The CTFs that I have worked on include:
* [Cyber Investigator CTF](https://ctf.cybersoc.wales/) created by the Cyber Society at Cardiff University, UK
* [OSINT Challenge](https://courses.thecyberinst.org/courses/osint-challenge) from The Cyber Institute
* [Sourcing.Games](https://sourcing.games/)
Note: The CTF Notes I post here will contain spoilers. Some of the solutions that I came up with took hours to complete. Don't expect them all to be easy. If you're looking for an easy way to get through them, then you're only cheating yourself. If you want to be challenged and to learn, then don't use them to cheat yourself out of practice.

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---
title: "Links"
date: 2022-09-25T17:45:19+02:00
draft: false
---
### Blogs
* [Aware Online](https://aware-online.com/)
* [bellingcat - the home of online investigations](https://www.bellingcat.com/)
* [Benjamin Strick](https://benjaminstrick.com/blog/)
* [Databases - Technisette website](https://technisette.com/p/databases)
* [Electronic Frontier Foundation | Defending your rights in the digital world](https://www.eff.org/)
* [Intelligence with Steve](https://www.intelligencewithsteve.com/blog)
* [Lorand Bodo](https://lorandbodo.com/)
* [MW_OSINT](https://keyfindings.blog/author/keyfindingsblog/)
* [Nixintel](https://nixintel.info/)
* [Null Byte](https://www.wonderhowto.com/search/osint/)
* [OSINT - Secjuice](https://www.secjuice.com/tag/osint/)
* [OSINT at home](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW96515QG6Y&list=PLrFPX1Vfqk3ehZKSFeb9pVIHqxqrNW8Sy)
* [OSINT Combine](https://www.osintcombine.com/blog)
* [OSINT Editor](https://www.osinteditor.com/)
* [OSINTme](https://www.osintme.com/)
* [Sector035](https://sector035.nl/)
* [We are OSINTCurio.us -- Helping the OSINT community stay curious](https://osintcurio.us/)
* [Wondersmith Rae](https://wondersmithrae.medium.com/)
### Podcasts
* [Breadcrumbs by Trace Labs](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breadcrumbs-by-trace-labs/id1542092539)
* [Michael Bazzell\'s The Privacy, Security, & OSINT Show](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-privacy-security-osint-show/id1165843330)
* [The Layer 8 Podcast](https://layer8conference.com/the-layer-8-podcast/)
* [The OSINT Bunker](https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/the-osint-bunker/)
* [The OSINT Curious Project Podcast](https://anchor.fm/osintcurious)
* [The World of Intelligence (Janes Podcast)](https://podcast.janes.com/public/68/The-World-of-Intelligence-50487d09)
### Tools
### Games
* [GeoGuessr](https://www.geoguessr.com/)
* [Sourcing.Games](https://sourcing.games/)

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---
title: "OSINT Notes"
date: 2022-09-25T13:31:40+02:00
draft: false
---
* [Facebook Scam](https://osint.syntopicon.info/osintnotes/scam/)

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---
title: "OSINT On Usenet"
date: 2022-11-17T21:37:55+01:00
draft: false
---
# OSINT on Usenet
This document is a work in progress.
## Introduction
The purpose of this guide is to give a general introduction to what is
Usenet, why is it important, and how to perform OSINT on it.
## What is Usenet?
Usenet is a decentralized, worldwide, peer-to-peer system for circulating messages between users.
### A little terminology:
* Usenet: A worldwide distributed discussion system that operates on a
purely peer-to-peer basis.
* Newsgroups: Discussions forums on Usenet. Newsgroups can either be
moderated or unmoderated. An example of a newsgroup would be the
alt.fan.usenetnewsgroup.
* Binary Newsgroups Many newsgroups in the alt.\* hierarchy are binary
groups and are very active for filesharing. In the past, this
caused a major disruption to Usenet as many providers dropped
Usenet as a service. Not onlywere copyrighted materials being
shared but so was child pornography. ManyUsenet servers will not
carry binary newsgroups, though most paid servicesstill do.
* Text Newsgroups The overwhelming majority of discussions take place
on text newsgroups. Text newsgroups are just plain text. If you
download a news article from a text newsgroup, it will only
contain plain text which makes it very useful for searching and
organizing.
* Articles: Messages or posts on newsgroups are known as articles.
* Hierarchies: Groups of newsgroups. These may be unmanaged such as
the alt.\* and free.\* hierarchies or they may be managed by
volunteer organizations. Many hierarchies are geographically
specific. In the past, many hierarchies were run by corporations
such as Microsoft and Novell, but those have become disused over
time.
* The Big-8: The Big-8 is a collection of hierarchies that are the
decedents of the original hierarchies that have been with Usenet
since the very beginning. Many newsgroups still have active
communities.
* Servers: Usenet servers are what make up the Usenet. They are run by
hobbyists and non-profit organizations or by companies that sell
access. Hobbyists and non-profits typically do not carry binary
newsgroups. While they do not outwardly advertise this fact,
Usenet access companies focus on providing access as a means for
filesharing.
## Why is Usenet Important?
While Usenet was originally developed in the late 1970s and early
1980s,it is still an active network with hundreds of servers worldwide
that operate in a purely peer-to-peer manner. Usenet does not have any
kind of top-down structure. Server administrators decide for
themselves what newsgroups they want to carry on their servers. Many
newsgroups and entire hierarchieshave been dormant for years. That
doesn't mean that there isn't any activity there, it
just means that it is far less than it was in its heyday.
One of the purposes of this guide is to demonstrate how to perform
historical research on Usenet. What was said 20 years ago on a Usenet
newsgroup may have real value to investigations today.
### A little history:
Usenet began as a project between the University of North Carolina and
Duke University in 1979. The grad students who began the project
presented it the following year at the annual USENIX conference and
after that, it exploded in popularity at universities and corporations
that did not have access to the predecessor of the Internet, the
ARPAnet.
In the late 1980s, Usenet servers starting being available on the new
Internet. In the 1990's, Usenet was the message board of the
Internet. Early online services like AOL and Compuserv had their own
message boardsand chat rooms, but many of the best conversations were
happening on Usenet. Much of today's online culture originated
on Usenet. This where we get concepts such as trolling and spam. It is
where Linux and IMDB had their starts. Activists like Julian Assange
got their start on Usenet and the seeds for Bitcoin were discussed
years before it was originally published. In the 90s and early 2000s,
Usenet was the 4chan, Reddit, Twitter, and Slashdot, of the Internet.
### Usenet today:
Usenet isn't what it used to be, but that doesn't mean
that it is completely dead. For the OSINT investigator, it is probably
not atop-tier location for investigations today. However, due to its
historic importance and the fact that it is still alive, albeit much
smaller, it should not be ignored.
Because Usenet is based on sending plain text messages, much if it has
been archived to this day and can be continually archives easily. That
isn't something that can be said about the proprietary systems
of the online services or even about modern services like Reddit or
Twitter where messages must be manually archived and are subject to
deletion by moderators at any time.
## How to perform OSINT on Usenet

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---
title: "Facebook Scam"
date: 2022-10-24T18:57:44+02:00
draft: False
---
## Original Post
![Reddit](/osintnotes/scam/1-reddit.png)
> So, a family member wants to buy a 40' shipping container and found a listing on FB for Aris Smart Shipping Containers. The website on the FB account goes no where, there are no likes, no followers, and no reviews. The seller is in WA, I are located in the Midwest. They claim that all of their drivers are in WA, and are able to ship a 40' container from WA to the MW, for roughly the cost of a 20' container locally ($2500). I tried to do a reverse search on the cell number, its apparently owned by Onvoy Limited. Which from what I can tell is a scam/spam, VoIP service. Is there any other ways to get info on this possible scam?
## My Response
> The first thing is that photos are all stolen from Facebook. The men in profile pic work for a legit New Zealand company called Royal Wolf.
>
> Their only positive review is from a person who's facebook profile is minimal and who's received a lot of crap from people for liking them.
>
> Their website domain was bought 3 months ago. The server is not configured correctly and is currently down. The IP address is being used to host tens (maybe hundreds) of other websites.
>
> The email address that they provide is only used on their website and nowhere else.
>
> Googleing the phone number reveals a second nearly identical profile for Shipping Containers Available Sales & Rentage based out of Cleveland with the exact same phone number. There's also a second phone number in the old posts (440) 926-6908. If you google that one, they are also selling exotic pets with the same kind of facebook post. That number is a burner text number from a company called "textnow"
>
> Here are my thoughts: I'm not an OSINT analyst, just a newbie who is learning OSINT. I'm sure a real analyst can squeeze a lot more. I feel confident that these people are scammers. However, I haven't found any personally identifiable info and I'm not going to spend money on this for a person-lookup service. I think the best thing to do right now is to do as much research as you can on their group of facebook profiles and report them all as scammers. They seems lazy and will be back with the same scams later, but unless there is hard proof as to who these people are, I wouldn't go much farther than that.
>
> One more thing... If you WANT to go farther, start investigating the friends of the lady who gave Aris Smart Shipping Containers their only positive review. She seems sketchy and since she has (possibly) real people in her friends list, that might be a lead.... oh and she's only ever liked one other facebook page. It's for exotic kittens and they have the same (440) 926-6908 phone number as above.
You can find the original post [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20221004181922/https://www.reddit.com/r/OSINT/comments/xvmdc3/help_finding_info_on_possible_scammer/) and my comments [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/OSINT/comments/xvmdc3/help_finding_info_on_possible_scammer/). (I still don't know why they deleted the original post, but thank God for archive.org!)
## My research
The first thing that I did was research "Aris Smart Shipping Containers" on Facebook and I found this page.
![Aris](/osintnotes/scam/2-aris.png)
The circled area are things that I looked at first.
Brave is my main browser of choice. I used the [Search by Image](https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image) extension to start taking a look at some of the images. The picture that I circled with the two men led me to this page for [Royal Wolf](https://www.royalwolf.co.nz/New-Dunedin-site-enables-growth-of-shipping-container-company-in-Otago), and company that makes shipping containers based out of New Zealand. That was the first major tip off that this Facebook page is a scam since they were stealing images from other companies, but I wanted to find something more. How did I know that Aris doesn't have some kind of legitimate reason for having these images on their Facebook page?
Previously, there was one like and positive review for Aris on Facebook. That review and like are gone now. I would not be surprised if the entire Facebook profile had been deleted. I did not record a screenshot of that page at the time, I'll just leave it at that.
The next thing to look at is the telephone number. Using Michael Bazzell's OSINT tools, I confirmed that the number, "+1 206-837-8761" is a VoIP number from a company called, "Onvoy Spectrum". I couldn't find anything specific about this number from the OSINT tools specifically, but when I googled the number, I found something big.
![Google Search](/osintnotes/scam/4-shipping.png)
It appears that Aris has a twin, [Shipping Containers Available Sales & Rentage](https://www.facebook.com/shippingcontainerssales1/)! This page has the exact same layout and even a few of the same images. Not to mention, the same telephone number, "+1 206-837-8761". I think the odds are very good at these two pages are made by the same person/group of people.
![Facebook Page](/osintnotes/scam/5-shipping-fb.png)
Notice that this page has been up for a lot longer than the one for Aris. If you scroll down, you can also see that there is yet another telephone number listed for them, "+1(440)-926-6908".
![Phone Number](/osintnotes/scam/6-phone.png)
When I researched the second number it brought me to [yet another Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/adorableminipigsforsale) that was created at about the same time as the previous one. It also has the same phone number. This time, they are selling mini pigs. Again, I see the same pattern. No reviews and more stolen images.
## What's next?
If this were a real investigation, I think the next step would be to do some paid search on the phone numbers and hopefully attach a real name to them. I don't think that's likely though. This scam is pretty simple. Offer things at an unbelievable price and then never deliver. Delete the account and start again with a new name. I didn't bother searching the email addresses because they are all pretty generic gmail accounts. I didn't expect to find anything there.
## Conclusion
At this point, I think it's pretty obvious that I've made it pretty clear that this is a scammer who has multiple Facebook pages but with a limited number of phone numbers that they are willing to use. I don't have enough information to see who is this scammer, where they are located, etc. I don't really have to either. This original question was, "Is there any other ways to get info on this possible scam?". I think the answer is very likely, a yes this is a scam.
It's been a few weeks since I wrote my original reply and I didn't keep my notes. It was only just recently that I thought about documenting my answer.
In the future, I will take the time to document the entire process and post them with my finding when possible.

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title = "Thoughts from an OSINT Newbie…"
date = "2022-07-06T17:23:17+02:00"
author = "fd"
showFullContent = false
readingTime = false
hideComments = false
+++
For the past few weeks, I have been interested in changing careers to work as an OSINT Investigator.
## What is OSINT?
According to Wikipedia:
> Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of data gathered from open sources (overt and publicly available sources) to produce actionable intelligence. OSINT is primarily used in national security, law enforcement, and business intelligence functions and is of value to analysts who use non-sensitive intelligence in answering classified, unclassified, or proprietary intelligence requirements across the previous intelligence disciplines.
## Why do I want to do this?
I think it seems like a genuinely interesting profession. It’s a profession in which I feel like I could make a positive impact and actually help people.
I think my existing skillset agrees with the kind of work that is involved with OSINT.
I’m very unhappy with my career at this point and I want something different.
## What are my plans?
First of all, I’m not going to give up my day job just yet.
What I am doing is: I’m reading a lot. I’m practicing my existing skills. I’m learning new tools, I’m building my own tools based on existing tools, and I’m learning about OSINT methodology.
I’m also taking the following courses:
* AutomatingOSINT Python
* Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) in 5 Hours
I have already taken this course which I highly recommend:
* Open-source Intelligence from the Basel Institute on Governance
I’m planning on taking Michael Bazzell’s Open Source Intelligence course and certification exam next year. After that, I’m going to update my resume and start applying for jobs.

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---
title: "Description"
date: 2022-11-17T14:57:29+01:00
draft: false
cover: /images/cover.jpg
---
Hi, I'm an OSINT researcher in training
and also support analyst/system
administrator/training with 20+ years of
experience in the IT field.
About this site:
This website contains the notes and
observations That I've made while
studying OSINT.

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title = "Review: A Christmas Story Christmas"
date = "2022-11-18T21:44:46+01:00"
author = ""
authorTwitter = "" #do not include @
cover = ""
tags = ["review", ""]
keywords = ["", ""]
description = ""
showFullContent = false
readingTime = false
hideComments = false
color = "" #color from the theme settings
+++
I'm wary of remakes and sequals that are made years or decades after the original. Too many times, they are lazy. Only a handful of the original actors ever come back, if they come back at all. The plots generally try to remake the original film beat for beat and by the middle, you know exactly how the ending will go because you've seen this movie before and it was better the first time.
Its 1973 and middle-aged budding author Ralpie Parker's goal is to get his first science fiction novel published before Christmas. Previously, he quit his regular job so he could focus on his writing and now money is tight before Christmas. Then he gets a call to return to his home town in Indiana. The plot revolves around Ralphie's desire to make the perfect Christmas and all of the adventures that come with it.
This is a heartfelt tribute to the original that has its own jokes and its own characters with their own arcs. Yes, there are scenes that are direct remakes of scenes from the original and there are even several flashbacks to footage from the original, but they aren't the entire story. They are mostly there to add color and a nod to the audience.
Watch it with your family with a bowl of popcorn and laugh. It's a good time.
9/10 stars.

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title = "Day1"
date = "2022-07-28T17:23:17+02:00"
author = "fd"
authorTwitter = "" #do not include @
cover = ""
tags = ["", ""]
keywords = ["", ""]
description = ""
showFullContent = false
readingTime = false
hideComments = false
+++
Hello world.
This is the first time that I am really giving Hugo a shot. Let's see how this turns out.

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title = "Email2.0"
date = "2023-12-17T12:41:15+01:00"
author = ""
authorTwitter = "" #do not include @
cover = ""
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For those who may not know, email is not owned by any one company. There are no copyrights or patents associated with email itself. It's an open standard that evolves over time through RFCs. While individuals and companies are free to develop software—whether open or closed source—using this standard, the core of email remains unchanged.
My Suggestion: Make Metadata-Minimized Email the New Standard
Currently, email consists of headers and a body. Even if the body is encrypted, the headers are not. These headers contain a significant amount of data that can be harvested, even if the message content remains unknown. This makes email inherently less private than other forms of electronic communication, and it’s one of its greatest vulnerabilities.
### What is Metadata-Minimized (M&M) Email?
M&M email would have just one piece of unencrypted metadata: the recipient's email address. That’s it. The recipient's information consists of two parts: the user and their domain. For example, in jsmith@example.com, "jsmith" is the user, and "example.com" is the domain. When an email reaches the example.com server, it simply routes the message to jsmith. There’s no need to include the sender’s information, timestamp, server type, IP address, or any other details typically found in unencrypted headers. Only the recipient's address is necessary.
### What About Spam?
This brings us to the second part of the standard. All elements of the email, apart from the recipient's address, would be encrypted using the recipient's public key. Users could choose whether or not to advertise their public key. If you don’t have the recipient's public key, you can’t send them an email—the message would be automatically deleted. For business users, this would drastically reduce the amount of malware received via email. Additionally, if a spammer doesn’t have your public key, they can't spam you. If they do have it, standard heuristic spam checks would still apply.
### Handling Other Metadata and Backwards Compatibility
What if the receiving server adds metadata like “date received” or “IP address received from,” even though it’s not part of the M&M standard? Unfortunately, there’s little that can be done to prevent this. However, the amount of data exposed would still be significantly less than what is typically available.
M&M email may not be backwards compatible with traditional email servers, as they might not know how to handle a message without all the usual headers. Conversely, an M&M-compliant server could theoretically ignore extra headers but would inform the user that the email is insecure.
### And What About Services Like Signal?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with Signal, but it’s not an open standard, and users don’t know what kind of metadata is collected or used. Additionally, Signal is designed for short-form messaging on mobile devices. Email, on the other hand, can handle megabytes of data, including text and attachments. The use cases for email and Signal are fundamentally different.
Let me know what you think! What would you add, change, or remove from this idea?

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title = "Turning Bits and Pieced of Data into Intelligence"
date = "2024-08-30T19:36:18+02:00"
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A few days ago, I saw this post on X:
![It's #OSINT time!](/images/vavilova.png)
The problem is that their goal for posting this wasn't clear. What was the intended use of gathering all of this information about this person except that
Turning Raw Data into Usable Intelligence: A Guide for OSINT Analysts
When it comes to Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), the journey from raw data to actionable intelligence can feel like navigating through a maze. You’ve got a massive amount of information at your fingertips, but the real challenge is making sense of it all. So, how do you turn scattered data points into something that actually helps someone make a decision? Let's dive into how OSINT analysts can transform raw data into valuable intelligence, and how those seemingly random bits of information can come together to create a coherent and impactful report.
Understanding the End Goal: What Are You Working Towards?
Before you even start sifting through data, it’s crucial to know what kind of intelligence product you’re aiming to create. This will shape your entire approach, guiding you on what to look for and how to piece it together. Here are a few common types of intelligence engagements you might encounter:
Threat Assessment: This could be anything from identifying potential cybersecurity threats to evaluating physical security risks. The goal is to anticipate and mitigate dangers before they become critical.
Competitive Analysis: In a business context, you might be tasked with gathering insights on a competitor's strategy, new product launches, or market position.
Geopolitical Forecasting: If you're working in government or for a global organization, understanding political trends, social unrest, or economic shifts in a region could be your focus.
Brand Reputation Management: For companies, keeping tabs on how they’re perceived online is crucial. Here, your job might be to monitor social media, news, and other public forums to gauge public sentiment and identify potential PR issues.
Each of these engagements requires a different approach to gathering and analyzing data. The key is to always keep the end product in mind—whether that’s a detailed report, a brief summary, or even a real-time dashboard.
Gathering Data: The Starting Point
Once you know what you’re working towards, the next step is gathering relevant data. And let's be real—this is where things can get messy. The internet is a vast place, and you’ll need to cast a wide net to pull in everything that might be useful. Think about the various sources you can tap into:
Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit—these platforms are gold mines for real-time information and public sentiment.
News Outlets: Both mainstream media and niche publications can provide crucial insights, especially when you’re tracking ongoing events.
Public Databases: Government records, academic publications, patents, and more can offer verified, authoritative data.
Forums and Blogs: Sometimes, the best insights come from places you wouldn’t expect—like specialized forums or blogs where industry insiders hang out.
Dark Web: For more advanced OSINT, the dark web can reveal hidden threats or illegal activities that wouldn’t show up in a standard Google search.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed here, but the trick is to stay focused on your goal. Keep your search broad enough to gather diverse viewpoints but narrow enough that you’re not drowning in irrelevant information.
Connecting the Dots: From Data to Intelligence
Now comes the fun part—making sense of all that data. This is where your analytical skills come into play. The raw data you’ve collected is like a giant puzzle, and it’s your job to fit the pieces together to reveal the bigger picture.
Identify Patterns: Start by looking for patterns and connections within the data. Are there recurring themes? Does one event seem to trigger another? These patterns can help you understand how different pieces of data relate to each other.
Corroborate Information: Not all data is created equal. Cross-check your findings with multiple sources to ensure accuracy. If one source says one thing and another says the opposite, dig deeper to find out which is more credible.
Contextualize the Data: Data without context is just noise. Think about the broader environment in which the data exists. For example, a spike in social media chatter might not mean much on its own, but if it coincides with a major news event, it could be significant.
Prioritize Information: Not everything you find will be relevant. Prioritize the data that directly relates to your objective. Ask yourself, “How does this piece of information help achieve the end goal?” If it doesn’t, set it aside.
Creating the Intelligence Product: Telling the Story
Once you’ve connected the dots, it’s time to turn your findings into an intelligence product. Remember, this isn’t just about presenting data; it’s about telling a story that helps your audience understand what’s happening and what they should do about it.
Structure Your Report: Start with an executive summary that highlights the key findings. Then, break down your analysis into clear sections, each addressing a specific aspect of the data. End with actionable recommendations or conclusions.
Visualize the Data: Charts, graphs, and maps can help make complex information easier to digest. Visuals are especially useful for showing trends, patterns, and correlations.
Keep It Clear and Concise: Avoid jargon and technical language unless your audience is familiar with it. The goal is to communicate your findings as clearly as possible.
Tailor to Your Audience: Think about who will be reading your report. Are they decision-makers looking for actionable insights, or are they analysts who need detailed data? Tailor the depth and tone of your report accordingly.
The Magic of OSINT: Making Sense of the Noise
At the end of the day, the magic of OSINT lies in your ability to transform a sea of random data points into a coherent narrative that helps someone make an informed decision. Whether you’re working on a threat assessment or a competitive analysis, the process is about much more than just gathering information. It’s about understanding how those pieces fit together, what they mean in the larger context, and how they can be used to drive action.
So, the next time you’re staring at a mountain of raw data, remember: every piece has the potential to contribute to the bigger picture. Your job is to connect the dots, tell the story, and turn that data into something truly valuable.

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title = "My Love and Hate Relationship with Hugo"
date = "2022-11-18T14:14:22+01:00"
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![hugo](https://theinfopunk.com/hugo.png 'hugo')
I decided to change this website yet again to a simple Hugo generated site for a few reasons.
1. It is more secure. There's no login and password like with Wordpress that can be hacked. The only way into the site is with my SSH key.
2. It is simple. I hate cookies warnings and I hate it when web developers include cookies when they are not needed. Consider this to me by privacy statement. This website doesn't have any cookies therefore there is nothing for me to use or sell.
3. I like the idea of being able to edit my site with a CLI text editor. I am writing this with Vim.
However, Hugo is a pain in the butt to work with at times. I would genuinely have more flexibity to make pages using plain html, but that would also be a to write and it would be ugly.
For example, it took far too long to figure out how to include the above image. It seemed like it would make sense if I could just include the image in normal markdown tags and then tell it to resize the image to the size that I want. No, in order to do that, I need to create a new configuration file that includes this image and then I can include it in a post. That's a lot of work and research just to include and resize an email. My workaround: I used The Gimp to resize the image and then I reuploaded it.

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title = "So, You're New to eReaders"
date = "2023-10-10T09:31:50+02:00"
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# What is an ebook?
An ebook is a computer file that is usually contains a book. The book may be
as simple as just plain text or it may be as complicated as a multimedia
experience with graphics, color, and ever embedded video. Ebooks have been
around in one form or another since the beginning of computing. Believe it
or not, Project Gutenberg, one of the largest free repositories or ebooks,
has been around since before the Internet.
Dedicated ereaders have been around since the 90's. Most of the time, due
to a
# What are all of these ebook formats?
Formats such as epub, mobi,

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title = "OSINT Review: I-Intelligence OSINT Handbook 2020"
date = "2023-11-12T14:41:59+01:00"
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The [2020 OSINT Handbook](https://i-intelligence.eu/uploads/public-documents/OSINT_Handbook_2020.pdf) published by [i-intelligence](https://i-intelligence.eu/) is the latest edition that is currently on their website. i-intelligence is a training and intelligence advisory firm.
The 2020 OSINT Handbook is a 509-page list of web links in PDF format. If you were expecting anything more, then you would be mistaken. It covers topics including social media, message boards, people search sites, and government and real estate sites.
Are these links useful? Absolutely! While you have to expect any PDF from 3 years prior to have many dead links, especially when it comes to ever-changing social media related tools, there are many resources here that might prove invaluable that you might never think of using. However, a PDF is probably one of the worst ways of sharing this information. If these links were in bookmark html format, they could easily be searched and added to a browsers bookmark file. However, having them in PDF format makes them kludgy to use and requires that you copy and paste the links directly in a browser.
I want to point out one other positive about this book, it is shared under a creative commons license and that should always be applauded!

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title = "Quick Comment About OSINT Investigation"
date = "2023-11-17T12:36:19+01:00"
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A few months ago, I wanted to try to practice my OSINT skills by looking up missing people by checking out the [National Center for Missing & Exploited Children](https://www.missingkids.org/) website. One of the people that I was checking on was a 14 year old girl who had been missing for about a week.
I started by looking her up on Facebook and found 2-3 Facebook and Instagram accounts a piece. Nothing of them showed much activity. Then I spread out by looking at the friends that this person took selfies with first. One of the friends had a few pictures with this girl that were fairly recent and within the time that this girl was missing.
I went to (what was then) the OSINTCurious Discord server to ask some questions about what I found. I was given some great suggestions:
1. What I was doing was potentially dangerous if I was not using good OPSEC. I was, but I knew to be extra careful anytime I am working with the real world and not in the safe confines of a practice CTF exercise.
2. I am not a professional. I am barely an amateur. I should not assume that I have all of the answers or that I know exactly what I am doing.
3. I should not contact anyone, especially not the families of the people involved. I probably shouldn't even contact law enforcement unless I knew exactly what I was doing or I had discussed it with someone else first.
All of this is good advice and these are most likely lessons that have been learned the hard way. If I want to be involved in the OSINT community, it's best that I learn slowly and do things the right way.
I ended up deleting the temp VM that I had been doing this work on so as to not take any chances and I have't done that exactl exercise again. Is there any harm in Googling people? Probably not but you also don't know the complications that can arise in the real world if you don't know what you're doing.

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title = "Random Thought About Social Media"
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I love the old days of the Internet and Usenet in particular. Life on Usenet was considerably different than it is today. Moderated groups were rare and the huge majority of them were unmoderated and yet they worked for the most part. Moderation was something that people did and not moderators. If you didn't want to see something, then you added that person or a keyword to your "killfile" and they wouldn't show up again. It was a simple and mostly affective block.
I don't think we could go back to that way of doing things. It just wouldn't work. People don't want to be responsible for moderating what they see.
...and yet there might be something there that can be taken and applied to future social media forums. Let's call it a reputation system. With a reputation system, we can get rid of a lot of banning and shadow-banning. One of the truths of free-speech is that people have the right to speak but they don't have the right to be heard. That people that people have the right to ignore things that they don't want to hear.
Let's say that User1 is moderately popular in Political_Group_A but non well known or somewhat less liked in Political_Group_B. If he posts in a forum for Political_Group_A, then his comments will be higher in the list and if he posts in Political_Group_B, it may be somewhat lower.
In the case of User2, if she is a troll when it comes to Political_Group_A who only shitposts, when it comes to Political_Group_B, her reputation will also be lower there by default.
Then there is User3 who is new to the forums. His reputation will be low everywhere until he starts contributing to the conversation. It will be tougher for a new user to get recognized but a user with no reputation is still better that a user with a bad reputation. This also helps with people with multiple accounts. I should take a while to build up a new account.
Reputation would be based on like and dislikes from what they post but also whether the user's own account gets likes and dislikes. A user who is generally pretty positive but has a single bad take shouldn't destroy their entire reputation but a known troll who actually has an insightful comment shouldn't be ignore for it.
Should people be able to other users' reputation score? I don't know, though I do think that a person should always be able to see their own.
Reddit has a system sort of like this, but more rudimentary, and they do employ bans, shadow bans, and autobans for be a part of the wrong community which I'm against in most cases. What I really want is to put moderation in the hands of the people like in the old days of Usenet, but in a sane and user-friendly way.
The biggest problem that I see, besides the inherent complexity of a system like this? What do you do when someone sends a bot army after someone that they don't like to destoy their reputation score because they dared to post in something unfavorable in a political group or had an unpopular opinion about a sports team? People on the intenet are vicious and they will try to hurt each other, sometimes for the dumbest offences.
Oh well, this is the kind of thing that I think about at midnight when I'm trying to get to sleep.

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title = "Rebooting OSINT"
date = "2023-11-12T12:07:42+01:00"
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I want to get back into OSINT now that I've had a chance to step away for a while and gather my thoughts a bit. I guess I should start by saying that I've never worked in OSINT. What I did do is read and dabble in OSINT and I also took a couple of courses and then worked through about 50% of another (very long) course before stopping. Before I talk about how I'm going to get back into it, I should talk about why I stopped.
1. I was overwhelmed by the amount to learn. -- In many ways, OSINT (outside of government intelligence) is a relatively tiny niche in the world of Cybersecurity, and yet it is a huge field all of its own. The more I read, the more that I needed to read and I ran into it so fast that I didn't give myself a chance to really grow from the basics because there is so much of it that just comes naturally to me.
2. I was overwhelmed by the subject matter. -- I want to do good with the skills that I have rather than just collect a paycheck however a lot of OSINT investigations go into some very dark area especially related to children. The idea of working on a case like that really bothers me to the core. I have to ask myself honestly if this is something that I want to do and if I can tolerate it mentally.
3. I don't know if I can move into OSINT without starting my career over again. -- I've already had at least one major career reboot in my life and for a few years life was pretty difficult after taking > 50% paycut. I'm not a newbie anymore when it comes to my career and I'm not young. I can't afford to start over again making barely over minimum wage.
There are other reasons such as my own emotional state at that time because I let my former job destroy me mentally. I also didn't have the drive to study and when I did, I felt strangely like I might screw something up especially when doing CTF challenges. I do not normally feel that way about IT stuff. I will gladly break an OS and reinstall it if it means I can learn something new, so why did I freeze up when doing a CTF?
How is this reboot going to work?
I'm going to start by start small. My plan is to read something short every day, write a few notes, and then move on to the next thing. I don't want to feel like I'm in over my head again.
The goal right now is to learn enough to pass my first OSINT certification exam. I'll probably blog more here and on social media so I move forward.

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title = "The Magic of Recluse: A Review"
date = "2023-10-15T16:31:41+02:00"
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**The Magic of Recluse** is a 1991 Epic Fantasy novel by L.E. Modesitt Jr. It was recently for sale as a [Humble Bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/books). I picked up the bundle because I recognized the author's name, but I hadn't read any of his works.
The Magic of Recluse centers around the story of Lerris from the land of Recluse who is often bored with the demanding perfectionism of his land. Every craft and trade must live up to the level of "perfection". Lerris is sent to live with his uncle, a woodworker because he considers his mother's pottery trade to also be boring. Within a few months, his skills grow and he learns to be proficient with woodworking as an apprentice, but he doesn't care about perfection in woodworking because it too is boring.
Perfection is important because the philosophy that drives his community is that perfection is order. Order is innately good while chaos is evil. The land of Recluse will always keep order and reject chaos at all times. It isn't long before Lerris is sent away from his uncle to be trained or exiled from the land. He must either learn what it means to fully embrace order in all things or be exiled for life. This begins the main story arc of the book.
I have to say, first of all, it is fantastic that Modesitt did not fall into some of the more common tropes. Lerris has potential but he is not the "chosen one". There is no chosen one. He is also not a Mary Sue. He must slowly learn and grow to achieve his potential. However, Lerris himself is boring and a little entitled. When his family and teachers try to get him to find answers to his questions through study, experimentation, and experience, he whines that they won't just tell him all of the answers directly.
While the character of Lerris is fleshed out, most of the side characters are flat and barely more than NPCs. Only his horse has more characterization than a paper cutout.
The order/chaos magic system is vague but tries to be deep and while I can't say that I expect the complexity of Robert Jordan, it still seems to be half-baked. To understand the magic system, you have to delve deeper into the order/chaos philosophy that is presented and it just doesn't hold water philosophically from a real-world point of view. What is considered order and what is considered to be chaos seems to be arbitrary at best. Perhaps Modesitt focuses on and cleans up this system in other books, but here it is messy and sometimes illogical.
I give The Magic of Recluse 4/10. It is not a boring book nor is it difficult to get into. When he’s not whining, Lerris is a good person, is likable, and he cares about people. However, when compared to other fantasy books that were being produced at the same time, The Magic of Recluse just doesn’t hold up as a book that should be remembered as something amazing.

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title = "Researching OSINT Companies and People"
date = "2022-11-18T22:24:08+01:00"
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tags = ["OSINT", "jobs"]
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One thing I've been doing as a part of my research into #OSINT as a future occupation is to scope out who is hiring, look up the company's website and their employees LinkedIn pages to see what experience they have.
I don't use a sock-puppet account for this, though I do have one. I actually want people to see me looking because when I start applying for jobs, I want my name to stick out. Also, I'm learning a lot about the OSINT job market by what these companies do on a day to day basis, and eventually I hope to make more contacts that can help with that.
About the employees that I look up, I do not dig into their history outside of LinkedIn. I just want to see what certifications, work history, and other training that they have that I might need to dig into myself. What I've found is that many people do not have a ton of certifications listed. Some have degrees is CompSci, but not a lot. Several have military backgrounds and I can see where that would be a big plus to an employer. However, there also seems to be a lot of people working is OSINT that came from regular jobs and then found there way into OSINT.
That's good news to me being that I'm a Linux trainer/admin who wants a new career.

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title = "Space Oddity"
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I'm not a David Bowie fan, but in the song Space Oddity, there's this amazing line:
>This is Ground Control to Major Tom
>
>You've really made the grade
>
>And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
>
>Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare
Sandwiched between congratuations to Major Tom and telling him that he has to progress to the next step of his mission, we find out what actually matters to the press (and the regular people): "And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear". In other words, they don't really care. This event is the first so everyone is excited because of that, but they don't actually care about it really. They care more about Major Tom's choice of fashion than about him or his mission.
I think that's an amazing piece of commentary about the society in which he lived and probably about our also.

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title = "I Rented a Tesla"
date = "2022-07-29T17:23:17+02:00"
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![](https://images.turo.com/media/vehicle/images/Iie3tcb-RuOKGbQm9pb6xg.1440x700.jpg) I rented a black Tesla model 3 Standard Range+ for a little more than two weeks for a trip to visit family in Illinois. I still have it for a couple of days before I have to take it back and fly home.
"Was is everything that I hoped it would be?"
In a way, yes it was exactly what I was expecting. Did I get the anticipated "instant torque"? Yes, I got it in loads but the thrill sort of wore off after the first couple of days. Did I get the dreaded range anxiety? Yes, I got heaps of that also. The closest supercharger was approximately 8-10% away in terms of battery range. I was able to slow charge at night using an 120V AC wall charger which gave me 20-30% overnight so I was never terribly concerned about range, but it was something that was always on my mind.
The biggest question is, did I have fun in it? Yes, but not nearly as much as I expected. After the thrill of the instant torque wore off and I became annoyed at needing to charge for 15-20 minutes every time I wanted to very far out of town, it became just another car.
That's not to say that the exerience was at all bad, it wasn't. A Tesla is just car and not a terribly remarkable one once you get past the newness of it. The most positive thing that I can say right now is that I have a firm understanding of what it means to drive an electric car. I know that as soon as the opportunity arises, I will switch over to an fully electric or Plugin-in hybrid vehicle.

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title = "Working with Torsocks"
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Torsocks acts as a network wrapper around linux applications. This allows them to work on the Tor network where that might not normally be possible. If the application that you are working with already has functionality that allows it to take advantage of a SOCKS5 proxy, then you can use Tor's built in proxy to do that. However if the application doesn't have that functionality, you can try to use Torsocks instead.
Note:
A word about anonymity. The point of the Tor network is to be anonymous. If you want to maximize anonymity, use the Tor Browser. However, sometimes you need to do things that the Tor browser can't do easily. In this post, I'm going to focus on using Torsocks with curl ([cURL](https://curl.se/)) and wget. Both of these tools are miminal web clients. While they can be fingerprinted as being not Tor Browser, the actual amount of metadata they provide is pretty tiny and it would be incredibly difficult to de-anonymize someone using them for basic downloads.
The first thing that you need to do is to install the tor daemon and torsocks to your linux distro. Here are a couple of example of how to do that:
Debian/Ubuntu
```
sudo apt install tor torsocks
```
openSUSE
```
sudo zypper in tor torsocks
```
You can then enable and start the tor daemon by running:
```
sudo systemctl enable --now tor
```
Once the systemd service is started, you can use torsocks. There is no reason to edit the torrc file or anything else. Let's get the current weather using curl and torsocks:
```
torsocks curl wttr.in
Weather report: Amsterdam, Netherlands
\ / Partly cloudy
_ /"".-. +7(5) °C
\_( ). ↘ 15 km/h
/(___(__) 10 km
0.5 mm
┌─────────────┐
┌──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤ Fri 05 Jan ├───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│ Morning │ Noon └──────┬──────┘ Evening │ Night │
├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ _`/"".-. Light rain sho…│ .-. Light drizzle │ _`/"".-. Patchy rain po…│ _`/"".-. Patchy rain po…│
│ ,\_( ). +7(4) °C │ ( ). +6(3) °C │ ,\_( ). +6(4) °C │ ,\_( ). +6(3) °C │
│ /(___(__) ↖ 20-30 km/h │ (___(__) ↖ 17-24 km/h │ /(___(__) ↘ 14-20 km/h │ /(___(__) ↘ 14-21 km/h │
│ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 10 km │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 2 km │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 10 km │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 10 km │
│ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 0.2 mm | 100% │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 0.7 mm | 100% │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 0.0 mm | 67% │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 0.0 mm | 62% │
└──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
┌─────────────┐
┌──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤ Sat 06 Jan ├───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│ Morning │ Noon └──────┬──────┘ Evening │ Night │
├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ Overcast │ _`/"".-. Patchy rain po…│ _`/"".-. Patchy rain po…│ _`/"".-. Patchy rain po…│
│ .--. +4(0) °C │ ,\_( ). +4(0) °C │ ,\_( ). +3(-2) °C │ ,\_( ). +2(-2) °C │
│ .-( ). ↓ 18-25 km/h │ /(___(__) ↓ 17-24 km/h │ /(___(__) ↓ 18-25 km/h │ /(___(__) ↙ 19-26 km/h │
│ (___.__)__) 10 km │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 10 km │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 10 km │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 10 km │
│ 0.0 mm | 0% │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 0.0 mm | 84% │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 0.0 mm | 89% │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 0.0 mm | 68% │
└──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
┌─────────────┐
┌──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤ Sun 07 Jan ├───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│ Morning │ Noon └──────┬──────┘ Evening │ Night │
├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ \ / Sunny │ \ / Sunny │ \ / Clear │ \ / Clear │
│ .-. 0(-6) °C │ .-. +1(-4) °C │ .-. 0(-4) °C │ .-. 0(-5) °C │
│ ― ( ) ― ↙ 21-31 km/h │ ― ( ) ― ↙ 21-28 km/h │ ― ( ) ― ↙ 16-25 km/h │ ― ( ) ― ↙ 14-23 km/h │
│ `-’ 10 km │ `-’ 10 km │ `-’ 10 km │ `-’ 10 km │
│ / \ 0.0 mm | 0% │ / \ 0.0 mm | 0% │ / \ 0.0 mm | 0% │ / \ 0.0 mm | 0% │
└──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
Follow @igor_chubin for wttr.in updates
```
I'm not in Amsterdam, so why did it give me the weather for Amsterdam? Because that's where the Tor exit node is. If I change the url for the weather from `torsocks curl wttr.in` to `torsocks curl wttr.in/chicago`, I will get the weather for Chicago. This is just a very simple example of how to use torsock with curl.
wget works the same way. Let's get an ebook copy of the US Constitution from Project Gutenberg in epub format.
```
torsocks wget https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5.epub.noimages -O uscontitution.epub
--2024-01-05 09:01:50-- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5.epub.noimages
Resolving www.gutenberg.org (www.gutenberg.org)... 152.19.134.47, 2610:28:3090:3000:0:bad:cafe:47
Connecting to www.gutenberg.org (www.gutenberg.org)|152.19.134.47|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5/pg5.epub [following]
--2024-01-05 09:01:50-- https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5/pg5.epub
Reusing existing connection to www.gutenberg.org:443.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 69326 (68K) [application/epub+zip]
Saving to: ‘uscontitution.epub’
uscontitution.epub 100%[======================================================================================================>] 67,70K --.-KB/s in 0,05s
2024-01-05 09:01:50 (1,25 MB/s) - ‘uscontitution.epub’ saved [69326/69326]
```
In this example, I just used wget as a downloader against the url of the ebook and I used the -O flag to specify the filename that I wanted it saved to.
One final note, if the website that you want to use curl, wget, or any other tool or application against does not allow Tor users, then this will not work. There's no silver bullet to getting around those IP blocks.

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title = "Tutorial"
date = "2022-07-06T17:23:17+02:00"
author = "fd"
showFullContent = false
readingTime = false
hideComments = false
draft = true
+++
Thoughts from an OSINT Newbie…
For the past few weeks, I have been interested in changing careers to work as an OSINT Investigator.
## What is OSINT?
According to Wikipedia:
> Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of data gathered from open sources (overt and publicly available sources) to produce actionable intelligence. OSINT is primarily used in national security, law enforcement, and business intelligence functions and is of value to analysts who use non-sensitive intelligence in answering classified, unclassified, or proprietary intelligence requirements across the previous intelligence disciplines.
## Why do I want to do this?
I think it seems like a genuinely interesting profession. It’s a profession in which I feel like I could make a positive impact and actually help people.
I think my existing skillset agrees with the kind of work that is involved with OSINT.
I’m very unhappy with my career at this point and I want something different.
## What are my plans?
First of all, I’m not going to give up my day job just yet.
What I am doing is: I’m reading a lot. I’m practicing my existing skills. I’m learning new tools, I’m building my own tools based on existing tools, and I’m learning about OSINT methodology.
I’m also taking the following courses:
* AutomatingOSINT Python
* Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) in 5 Hours
I have already taken this course which I highly recommend:
* Open-source Intelligence from the Basel Institute on Governance
I’m planning on taking Michael Bazzell’s Open Source Intelligence course and certification exam next year. After that, I’m going to update my resume and start applying for jobs.

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title = "Update"
date = "2023-03-11T17:10:23+01:00"
author = ""
authorTwitter = "" #do not include @
cover = ""
tags = ["", ""]
keywords = ["", ""]
description = ""
showFullContent = false
readingTime = false
hideComments = false
color = "" #color from the theme settings
+++
The past year has been difficult. About a year ago, I was so burned out on my job that I started looking for a way out. I couldn't just leave without an exit strategy and I knew that it would take more than a year to complete. I'm an American citizen who has spent the last several years living in Europe. We made the decision to get a green card for my wife and then move back to the US.
In my off-time, I dove headfirst into studying OSINT with the goal of making that my new career path after moving. I still had my day job which I mostly loathed, but I continued working there and tried my best to stay positive.
From February 2022 to January 2023, everything went as planned. My wife was awarded her green card in January. I had told me company months before that I wanted to transfer to the US with the goal of moving to another department as soon as possible after I moved back to the US. I was told that shouldn't be a problem.
Last month I was told that my request to transfer to the US was denied. US benefits and pay were so much more than what I made where I live, that they were not willing to pay for the transfer. I was at a loss. I couldn't just move and take my chances that I would find a new job before I left. What would happen if I was unsuccessful and my savings ran out?
Instead, I took the slightly less difficult road and found a new job in the country where I live. It is not a job that works with OSINT. Instead, it is a research and development position which is actually a lot more interesting that the job that I am leaving.
I am still planning on moving back but those plans have been pushed back by a year.
In the meantime, my OSINT studies have slowed. I'm not doing much in the community and I'm afraid that I will forget what I know. I'm in a difficult situation where now I have to put as much concentration as I can into my new job and getting prepared to work there while also trying to train for the future, not to mention trying to have a personal life with my wife outside of work.

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+++
title = "Use Tor Without Tor Browser"
date = "2023-12-03T15:23:51+01:00"
author = ""
authorTwitter = "" #do not include @
cover = ""
tags = ["tor", "tech"]
keywords = ["", ""]
description = ""
showFullContent = false
readingTime = false
hideComments = false
color = "" #color from the theme settings
+++
This post originally came from a reply that I made to a question that was asked on the r/tor subreddit.
So, you want to run the tor service on in Linux but not just with the Tor Browser. Let's assume that you're running a Debian-based Linux distro.
```
sudo apt update && sudo apt install tor torsocks
sudo systemctl enable --now tor
```
This will install the tor service and run it as a server as the "tor" user. Any program that you run that can use a SOCKS5 proxy can take advantage of this service by connecting to localhost:9050.
If your program does not use a SOCKS5 proxy, maybe it will work by running it from the command line with: `torsocks myapp` with "myapp" being the application that you want to run with Tor.
This could be a bad idea though for 2 reasons.
1. Most application developers do not write their software to use Tor. If you need to connect to a remote server with that application, any server you connect to may block you because they don't allow connections from Tor exits notes.
2. Most applications aren't written to hide your fingerprint because that wasn't important to the developer when they wrote it. Only Tor Browser and (to a lesser extent) Brave's Tor Mode, were written with specifically with fingerprinting in mind.
With that said, there are a lot of very cool things you can do with Tor and normal applications. If you know IRC, the OFTC network allows Tor users where other servers don't. You can tunnel SSH and Telnet connections through Tor (if you don't mind the extra lag). You can connect to other non-web services with Tor because their are typically not bothered by Tor users or bots coming from Tor.
There are also a ton of very interesting things that you can do by creating your own onion services.
However, you should really understand what is going on with how Tor works before you give away any personal info on any external service or on your own onion service. Running Tor is primarily about anonymity, not security or privacy. If you de-anonymize yourself by telling people who you are, then there's no one to blame but you.

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title = "The Lack of the Walled Garden"
date = "2023-12-17T10:39:51+01:00"
author = ""
authorTwitter = "" #do not include @
cover = ""
tags = ["linux", "tech"]
keywords = ["", ""]
description = ""
showFullContent = false
readingTime = false
hideComments = false
color = "" #color from the theme settings
draft = true
+++
The Linux desktop today, regardless of the distro, is not safe (in the minds of regular computer users) in the same way that Windows and Mac are safe. It is scary and weird. Even vanilla Ubuntu LTS, which doesn't change a great deal between versions, is still far too wild for most users because it is too different from what they are used to.
The year of the Linux desktop was 2011. That was the year that Google introduced the Chromebook. You might not think of the Chromebook as being a suitable Linux desktop, and it is indeed very locked down, especially in those early years. However, what average computer users want is a stable interface that doesn't change. They want a walled garden that is easy to use and safe. Chromebooks and Android represent the walled garden better than any other Linux system.
We can also agree that the lack of proprietary software is an issue but before they will be willing to spend money on Linux, there needs to be users there to spend money on. That's why Adobe has official Android apps but not apps on the regular Linux desktop. They spend money on where the users are.
The good news is that this is not a bad thing! We here are professionals and enthusiasts. Many of us are here because we want more choices. Many of us care about software freedom and open source. Don't be upset that we will never see the year of the Linux desktop as we would like to see it, but happy that we have options and are not tied down to only using something that someone else requires of us.
One last thing, support the distro of your choice! We only have choices because we decide that we want them. I don't care which distro you prefer, get involved with them, become a member, donate your time and/or money to make them better, and encourage and help other users regardless of who they are or what their background is.

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title = "Where Am I"
date = "2023-08-13T11:12:58+02:00"
author = ""
authorTwitter = "" #do not include @
cover = ""
tags = ["Life", "misc"]
keywords = ["", ""]
description = ""
showFullContent = false
readingTime = false
hideComments = false
color = "" #color from the theme settings
+++
Hmmm, it's been a while.
I started a new job. It's DevOps, not OSINT, but I am in a better place in my life.
I want to do more learning and more writing. I know a lot about things that OSINT courses never touch upon. Too many times they only focus on the mainstream because it's easiest. I think I can help people learn about the parts of the internet that are not well known or understood.

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overflow: auto;
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border-radius: 10px;
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body {
font-size: 2.5vmin;
line-height: 2.6vmin; }
#content {
min-width: 60vmin; } }

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