OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) content discovery is the process of locating and extracting content from publicly available sources. This can include websites, social media platforms, and other online resources. The aim of content discovery is to find information that can be used in investigations or business analysis.
Google Hacking / Dorking is
Google hacking / Dorking takes advantage of Google's sophisticated search engine capabilities, which let you select unique material. You may, for example, use the site: filter to select out items from a specific domain name (for example, webpage.com) you can then match this up with certain search terms, such as admin (webpage.com admin), which will only show results from the webpage.com website that include the term admin. You may also combine multiple filters.
For more information check the following Wikipedia webpage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_hacking
Wappalyzer
Wappalyzer is a cross-platform utility that uncovers the technologies used on websites. It can identify content management systems (CMS), e-commerce platforms, frameworks, payment processors web servers, and other technology-related features.
For more information check the following website: https://www.wappalyzer.com/
Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is a historical archive created by the Internet Archive. It stores copies of websites and allows users to browse through them. The Wayback Machine can be used to view past versions of websites or to track changes over time. You can look up a domain name and see how often the service scraped the web page and stored the content. This service can be used to find out if any old pages remain on the current website.
For more information check the following website: https://archive.org/web/
GitHub
GitHub is a web-based hosting service for software development projects. It allows users to share code repositories, track changes, and collaborate on projects. GitHub can be used to find open-source code snippets, connectors, and other tools that may be useful in investigations or business analysis.
You may use GitHub's search function to look for company names or website names in the hopes of finding repositories linked to your objective. You may discover source code, passwords, or other information that you didn't already have after it's been discovered.
S3 Buckets
S3 Buckets are cloud-based storage services offered by Amazon. They allow users to store files and data in the cloud. The file's owner may restrict access to only those people who have permission to view or modify the data. These settings are sometimes incorrect and unintentionally allow access to files that should not be accessible to the general public. The S3 buckets are accessible at http(s)://{name}.s3.amazonaws.com, where {name} is derived by the owner. There are many ways to discover S3 buckets. For example, you may look for URLs in the website's page source, GitHub repositories, or even automate the process.
Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed OSINT content discovery methods that can be used in investigations and business analysis. These methods include Google hacking/Dorking, Wappalyzer, Wayback Machine, GitHub, and S3 buckets. Each of these tools has its own unique benefits that can be used to locate content from publicly available sources. I hope you find these tools useful and informative.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to us. Thank you for reading!
