open source intelligence isn't a modern technique it has been around since the very beginning in fact during the second world war Lieutenant General Samuel B Wilson who headed the American defense intelligence agency in the 70s made an astounding claim that he received 90 of intelligence data through open sources but what exactly is open source intelligence and what does it mean in the Modern Age of Technology well in simple terms open source intelligence or ocean refers to the process of gathering publicly available information about a person company or an organization from a variety of sources that are accessible for anyone to see these sources can range from social media platforms and websites to public records and news articles for example let's say you want to find out more information about who this particular person hangs around with but when you go to their Facebook's friend list you notice that they've hidden or concealed this information so what can you do in a scenario like this well if you go ahead and open up their profile photo cover photo or any other post made by them that is set to public you can look at the likes or comments to possibly get some Clues such as the full names of their friends and the people they frequently interact with this small amount of intelligence that we just gathered is called open source intelligence now you might be wondering that okay so what if we got their full names how can we find more about them well this is where our first oceans technique called Google hacking or Google Dorking comes into play but before we get into that a quick disclaimer while Gathering publicly available information is legal using it to compromise security or engaging in other activities with ill intent can still result in trouble real quick this video is meant for educational purposes only and strongly discourages an ethical Behavior anyway coming back to the topic Google Dorking involves utilizing Google search engine with special search operators to find information that may not be easily found through regular searches for example let's say we're looking to purchase a Wireless Wi-Fi adapter and we conduct a search on Google in this scenario Google will present us with wireless adapters available on different websites from across the globe but what if we specifically want to see search results from a particular website like Amazon well in that case we can employ a special search operator called site colon followed by amazon.com in the search query like this to exclusively see search results limited to Amazon this practice is essentially what we refer to as Google hacking or Google Dorking now similarly if you possess the full name of your target you can go ahead and search for every publicly available PDF Excel or Word document posted online containing the exact name using the file type search operator to accomplish this you would first enter the victim's name enclosed an inverted Comet like this and then write file type to specify the types of files you want to search for the all research operator used here tells the search engine to also include Excel and Word Documents in the search results after hitting enter the search results will display all the documents that may be associated with the provided name this can be very effective as the documents found might include court records resumes or other official documents that can give insight into a person's life the beautiful aspect of Google Dorking is that if you wish to refine these search results even further by targeting a particular website such as the victims University or workplace you can achieve it by incorporating the sitecolon search operator we discussed earlier now if you would like to experiment with different search operators on your own I will provide a link to a cheat sheet in the description down below that includes various search operators specifically tailored for open source intelligence Additionally you can also visit a website called the Google hacking database where several people have created and posted multiple search strings to find juicy information now if your victim has a photo of themselves as their profile picture you can conduct a search for them based on their facial features using a fascinating tool called demise this tool utilizes AI facial recognition to search for the same person across the internet and help us gather additional information about their online presence and if the victim has upload did a photograph of themselves standing outside next to a building or something without providing any specific information as to where they might be you can head over to images.google.com click on search by image and upload that photograph to initiate a reverse image search by analyzing the visual characteristics of the image and comparing it to similar images across the web Google May provide valuable information about where the photograph was taken or other related details additionally if you couldn't find anything using Google images you can also explore other tools available for conducting reverse image searches by searching for them on the Internet next if you have managed to obtain the email address of your victim through Google Dorking or any other means you can also conduct a reverse email search on them using a useful tool called fbos this tool allows you to search for social media accounts associated with an email address and explore other activities carried out by the owner of that email such as their contributions to Google Maps finding multiple social media accounts of our victim is a great way to learn more about their interests for example a programmer is likely to have an active profile on GitHub while an artist may have profiles on platforms like Pixar or deviantART exploring different social media accounts can provide valuable insights into the Hobby's passions and creative Pursuits of an individual when looking for social media accounts associated with a person there's another fantastic website called socialsearcher.com this website allows you to perform a comprehensive Google search using the victim's full name across multiple social media platforms simultaneously and save a lot of valuable time slash effort you can also head over to checkusernames.com and search for a specific username on over more than 100 social media platforms this tool can be very effective as many people prefer using a single username across the internet similar to feos a website called that's that is another great tool for finding information on both email addresses and phone numbers phone numbers can also provide a wealth of information when conducting an ocean investigation and if you're interested in learning more about phonos and techniques you can check out my detailed video on the topic by clicking the I button above Intel techniques by Michael basil is also a good resource which provides multiple tools to gather information about our targets from their social media accounts this website gathers all the important links in one place saving us time that we would otherwise spend manually going through our targets profiles anyway guys this is it for the video now I could go ahead and discuss several more tools and sources that can be utilized for finding information about someone but I want to encourage you to visit the ocean framework yourself and explore the multiple tools available there if you have any questions regarding the video make sure to ask them in the comments section below and I will see you in the next one