MetaOSINT's author recently published an analysis on trends in the OSINT landscape, based on 5 years' worth of collecting tools & resources. Check it out here.
Open source intelligence (“OSINT”) is intelligence derived from open sources. Intelligence refers to raw information that has been analyzed or contextualized. Open source refers to information that virtually anyone can access, usually over the internet.
OSINT’s definition is often extended to other forms of information/data, which may be publicly available and “free”, but which require something like registering with an email in order to obtain it.
MetaOSINT is a free and openly available aggregation of "top" tools & resources intended to help jumpstart OSINT investigations. MetaOSINT was built by a former OSINT analyst & investigator to help answer questions like "I wonder if there’s a way to find __ specific piece of information online?"
By compiling and prioritizing among thousands of tools and resources, MetaOSINT seeks to help OSINT practitioners intuitively surface the most relevant resources much more quickly. MetaOSINT was published in 2021 and received two rounds of major updates in 2022 & 2023.
MetaOSINT welcomes contributions from the community! If you have a great OSINT tool or site that isn't included yet, please submit the details via this form:
MetaOSINT contains resources from three source buckets.
Sources with the MetaOSINT label are the core of the dataset. The MetaOSINT project takes a broad survey of OSINT tools & resources that are referenced on other OSINT-focused websites & lists. By highlighting the tools/resources that overlap the most across these other sources (per the “citation count”), the project aims to help practitioners more easily surface the “most popular” OSINT resources out of the massive body that exist in the landscape today.
The MetaOSINT dataset originally derived from a survey by the project’s author of nearly 30 lists of OSINT tools & resources, which contained nearly 5,000 source links referenced in multiple lists. v3 (December 2023) added another large batch of sources referenced across OSINT-focused bookmark collections, more than doubling the total number of sources tracked. Aggregation from the SMART project was invaluable here – that dataset was then further refined down to resources matching the existing MetaOSINT category classifications (plus a small handful of new sub-categories) and ones mentioned multiple times.
A small number of resources in the MetaOSINT dataset derive from automated polling of social media platforms in 2022. These are labeled Social Share. A final small set comes from manual additions and are labeled Manual.
Thanks to all OSINT community members who build, compile, and freely share tools & resources!
Here are over 4000 #OSINT resources 👀. What a goldmine!
— SpiderFoot (@spiderfoot) May 23, 2022
Use responsibly.https://t.co/sYyRYnwHxF
With only minutes to spare, but a nice cup of coffee in my hand while I press the "schedule" button, I present to you another Week in #OSINT!
— 𝕊𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕠𝕣𝟘𝟛𝟝 (@Sector035) May 30, 2022
H/T: @lautyb @Os2Int @IntelScott @kirbstr @Gralhix @offtopicvideos @osintbearhttps://t.co/9Qp1mjmbXG
This collection of #OSINT tools from @IntelScott is ace, thanks for creating this! https://t.co/2zSBMyTuA0
— Nick (@isitborked) May 27, 2022
[#DailyOSINT - Day#140] This guy @IntelScott did what we all have wanted to do for a long time. Seriously, this site alone worths 5k #OSINT tweets. He has created a MASSIVE(!) list of OSINT tools combining already existent OSINT lists. https://t.co/UtXFPBcp4C Well done my friend!
— White Hat Inspector (@WHInspector) June 20, 2021
🕵️ Collection of 4000+ OSINT resources
— payloadartist (@payloadartist) May 26, 2022
🔗 https://t.co/aNcJspUaJ1#OSINT #redteam #Pentesting #bugbounty #infosec #cybersecurity pic.twitter.com/DKnBwRraIO