The OSINT Newsletter – Issue #104

👋 Welcome to the 104th issue of The OSINT Newsletter. This issue contains OSINT news, community posts, tactics, techniques, and tools to help you become a better investigator. My goal with this newsletter is to help promote the OSINT industry, develop better investigators, and raise awareness of ethical use cases for open source intelligence.

🪃 If you missed the last newsletter, here’s a link to catch up.

⚡ OSINT and the Dark Web: Part One

The OSINT Newsletter – Issue #103

Let’s get started. ⬇️

📰 3 Basic but Overlooked Intelligence Analysis Techniques

Plot it on a map, lay it out over time, or group it by theme. Simple moves that surface patterns, gaps, and what matters without collecting anything new.

Read on LinkedIn…

🎩 H/T: Paul Prouse

📰 Mining China’s ‘Little Red Book’ for Open Source Gold

A breakdown of how Xiaohongshu can be used for investigations, from diaspora activity to censorship patterns, plus practical tips for search, language, and preserving content before it disappears.

Read on Bellingcat…

🎩 H/T: Chu Yang

📰 Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media

An investigation finds networks of AI-generated avatars posting pro-Trump content across major platforms, blending spam, engagement farming, and political messaging at scale.

Read on The New York Times… | No Paywall

🎩 H/T: Tiffany Hsu

🔎 CoJournalist

coJournalist lets reporters deploy AI “scouts” to track pages, social accounts, and public records, then distills updates into structured, cite-ready leads.

Web App

🎩 H/T: Tom Vaillan

🔎 Snapchat Bitmoji History

A simple tool that pulls past Bitmoji versions from a Snap profile and displays them in one place, building on earlier research and tooling.

Bookmarklet

🎩 H/T: Micah Hoffman

🔎 ImageWhisperer

ImageWhisperer analyzes uploaded media for AI generation and manipulation signals, producing a single verdict with evidence across multiple detection models.

Web App

🎩 H/T: Henk Van Ess

🏁 New CTF Challenge Live – The Dark Web DB

A new CTF challenge has been posted on our CTF website. This week’s challenge involves identifying a threat actor who published a database allegedly belonging to a French and Belgian fast-food chain “Quick” on the Dark Web. Your objective is to find the actor’s username and determine the exact timestamp of the original publication.

Start competing in our Capture the Flag (CTF)

🪃 If you missed the last CTF, here’s a link to catch up.

Last week’s CTF challenge featured a challenge titled “Crowd Control” where participants needed to estimate the number of people present in an auditorium by using a specific AI tool available publicly.

✅ That’s it for the free version of The OSINT Newsletter. Consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support this publication and independent research.

By upgrading to paid, you’ll get access to the following:

⚡ Gathering OSINT from Live Traffic: Datasets and Cameras

• Traffic datasets and live cameras give you situational awareness into areas of interest for an investigation. Whether it’s business continuity, executive protection, global travel, or something niche, this issue breaks down the options available to you in an actionable plan.

👀 All paid posts in the archive. Go back and see what you’ve missed!

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