You can read some old issues similar to this on following page -

https://osintupdates.com/t/top10series

Let’s start with the series with the best free courses for learning OSINT for beginners.

⭐Sponsor: UserSearch Premium

No Code, No API Keys, No Sales Calls — Pure OSINT at your Fingertips.

Check out why UserSearch Premium is growing so fast. A new platform for a new era.

Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) in 5 Hours by The Cyber Mentor

Course Duration - 4.5 hours

Target Audience - Complete Beginners (who have zero knowledge of OSINT)

What you will learn - It will give you a brief overview of OSINT, note taking, sock puppets, google dorks, reverse image searching, geolocation, breached data, people search engines and social media OSINT.

Review/Personal Opinion -

It’s one of the most popular free courses and it’s loved by beginners. I have completed this course back in 2021 when i was a complete beginners in OSINT and I really liked. It gives you a rough idea of what you are going to learn in this domain, so I genuinely recommended this course. But I also believe, this course is over hyped, many people recommended this course as a beginner would become expert by completing this little course. It will just give you an introduction to different topics in OSINT, don’t keep any high expectations from it.

OSINT At Home by Benjamin Strick

Course Duration - Undefined

Target Audience - Everyone (useful for all OSINT lovers)

What you will learn - Technically, this is not a course, it’s a playlist where new videos get added regularly. As of today, it has some amazing videos on topics like reverse image search, geolocation, image OSINT, Google Dorking.

Review/Personal Opinion -

This is one of my favorite playlists which is still my first recommendation when someone asks me resources for learning GeoINT. Every new video of the playlist has something new to teach and I am follower of this person from my early days when i was new in OSINT.

10 Minute (or less!) OSINT Tips by OSINT Curious Project

Course Duration - Approx 5.5 hours

Target Audience - Beginner’s and Intermediate

What you will learn - This is again not a course, but a playlist. It is not targeted on any particular topic, so can’t say what exact topics you will be learning, but you will be learning a lot of new things.

Review/Personal Opinion -

This is an amazing playlist of some awesome videos created by OSINT Curious, which was run by some amazing OSINT Experts like Sector035, Wondersmith Rae, OSINT Techniques and some others. I highly recommended completing this playlist or if you want, i share my short notes for this playlist which I created last year. Drop a comment if you want and will see where to post them.

An Introduction to Open-Source Intelligence by Security Blue Team

Course Duration - Depends on you

Target Audience - Beginners

What you will learn - It is a learning-based course. You will be doing challenges on the topics and tools like The Harvester, TweetDeck, Google Dorks, OSINT Framework, Reverse Image Searching.

Review/Personal Opinion -

This is not a course which will teach you from the basics, instead it’s a learning-based course which will teach you how to apply OSINT for solving problems in CTFs and in real world. Start this course, when you have foundational knowledge of OSINT or in other words, when you have completed the three above mentioned courses. I really suggest this course as it will teach you how to tackle the problems and how to think.

Open-source Intelligence by Basel Institute of Governance

Course Duration - Depends on you

Target Audience - Anyone

What you will learn - It’s a learning based interactive course. Here, you will be learning the basics of OSINT, searching in databases, fundamentals of WebINT and SOCMINT.

Review/Personal Opinion -

When I completed this course last year, i loved this as it’s an interactive, rather than watching some boring videos, i was solving case with my learning and knowledge in OSINT. I highly recommend this course as it simulates a real-world investigation and gives you the confidence in your skill when you finish the course.

Open source intelligence (OSINT) Tutorials by TechChip

Course Duration - Undefined

Target Audience - Beginners

What you will learn - Here, you will be learning about different OSINT tools and techniques in Hindi.

Review/Personal Opinion -
This is another playlist which has some really good videos for beginners but it’s in Hindi language. I have watched some videos in playlist, and I liked those. Sorry for those don’t understand Hindi.

Maltego for Cybercrime Investigations by Maltego

Course Duration - 1 hour or less

Target Audience - Everyone (useful for all OSINT lovers)

What you will learn - It is a learning-based course. You will be learning how to use Maltego for investigation, how to investigate a phone number, email address, person’s name.

Review/Personal Opinion -

I would recommend this course to those who wants to learn how to use Maltego as a tool for their Investigations, this course have enough resource to get started with Maltego and Personally I would suggest to go through this course because Maltego is a highly used tool in the industry and learning how to use it will help you a lot.

So, these are my favorite course which i suggest to any beginner who approached for asking for resources. There are many other free courses and playlists for OSINT, some of them will be good and some will be bad too. But i only recommended those resources which I myself have used or am sure of their quality. I don’t want to give any bad advice or any advice which can be harm anyone in the future.

Some other free courses are -

The Complete Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) Training Course

OSINT Training

Note - I don’t have any idea about the quality of these two courses.

That’s it for this issue. Like it and share it with your friends who are interested in OSINT.

Did we miss something important? Drop a message on our social and will add that in this issue. Feel free to contact for suggestions and feedback.

If you haven’t read the last issue, read it now by clicking on the below snippet -

Subscribe now

1. Maltego - a data mining and link analysis tool
   Why you should learn - It’s help in automating simple tasks for gathering and analyzing information. A great tool for automation and it’s transforms make it a perfect tool when you are doing OSINT at a scale. Community edition of the tool is free, so just learn and use that as a beginner.

2. Recon-ng - a full-featured reconnaissance framework

   Why you should learn - It’s a great tool for automating the web-based recon. It helps in gathering information about a website via automation saving your time, so you can focus on other tasks.

3. Spiderfoot - an OSINT automation tool

   Why you should learn - It gathers information from a lot of source and then perform analysis on that. It’s available in command line and in web-based interface.

4. Sherlock - a username checker

   Why you should learn - It’s the most widely used username checker. It has big list of sites where it checks if that username exists or not. It helps in finding possible social media accounts of the target.

5. Maigret - a username enumeration tool
   Why you should learn - It firstly check if the given username exists and thousands of sites from its database and if exists, it automatically collects useful information from there.

6. Torbot - a Darkweb OSINT tool
   Why you should learn - It helps you in performing OSINT on darkweb. It has a lot of features which simplifies your work, like it’s onion crawler, crawling custom domains, saving all data in html or json.

7. Mosint - an automated email OSINT tool
   Why you should learn - It helps in gathering information about target email. It automates the task of checking the email in leaked database, finding related emails and domains, etc.

8. H8mail - another email OSINT tool
   Why you should learn - It’s specifically designed for breach hunting, so it supports more website as compared to Mosint.

9. Web-check - All-in-one web osint tool
   Why you should learn - It simplifies the work of gathering information about a website. It gathers information from a lot of sources and presents it in a simple layout. You can use it directly by going to the below website.
   ClickHere

10. Social-Analyzer - another username enumeration tool
    Why you should learn - It’s available in API, CLI, and Web App for analyzing & finding a person's profile across +1000 social media \ websites. It includes different analysis and detection modules, and you can choose which modules to use during the investigation process.
    

That’s it for this post, see you guys in the next post which will be released Tomorrow. Subscribe to the newsletter if you haven’t yet.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

In the last post, Top 10 OSINT Courses for Beginners | The Top10 Series, we shared top 10 course, now moving ahead, we will be covering the top 10 books in this post.
Note - We haven’t gone through the pricing of books, so decide it yourself if a book is worth purchasing as per the price and knowledge for you.

1. Deep Dive: Exploring the Real-world Value of Open Source Intelligence by Rae Baker
   Review: I haven’t read it yet, but I have listened all the positive reviews about the book from many industries professional and it’s the most recently updated book, so highly recommended. Also, I have read some medium blogs written by Rae Baker, so it’s assured it will be full of knowledge.

2. Open Source Intelligence Methods and Tools: A Practical Guide to Online Intelligence by Nihad A. Hassan & Rami Hijazi
   Review: I have read this book in 2022 and i loved reading this at that time, so if it’s affordable for you, give it a try.

3. OSINT Techniques: Resources for Uncovering Online Information by Michael Bazzell
   Review: One of the best book i have read for learning OSINT, i suggest to go for the digital version as it’s affordable for most of the people, but if you want you can go for print version too.

4. Extreme Privacy: What It Takes to Disappear by Michael Bazzell
   Review: I haven’t read this book yet, but it’s in my bucket list, so will read this soon. This book won’t help you in OSINT directly, but it will help you in OPSEC and will help you in decision making in OSINT investigations.

5. Verification Handbook by European Journalism Centre
   Review: It’s a good book for learning fact checking and OSINT for investigating journalism. It’s available for free, so must read.

6. We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins
   Review: I have plans of reading this book this year, no opinions on this as it’s recommended by someone else to me, you can give it a try if you want.

7. Operator Handbook: Red Team + OSINT + Blue Team Reference by Joshua Picolet
   Review: It’s outdated but it’s recommended for people who are in cybersecurity. For others, i don’t recommend this.

8. THE ART OF INVISIBILITY by Kevin Mitnick
   Review: It’s a book written by one of the best hackers, so it will surely be awesome, have plans of reading it this year. It’s not directly on OSINT but good for understanding OPSEC.

Sadly, we didn’t have any other book recommendations to complete the list of 10.
You can check out some free books available on Internet Archive if you have free time. Click Here for Books available on Internet Archive

That’s it for this post, see you guys in the next post which will be released Tomorrow. Subscribe to the newsletter if you haven’t yet.

Read the new issue of this newsletter by clicking on the below link -

Note: This post is completed based on my own knowledge, experience and opinion’s. No promotion/affiliate is involved in this.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Let’s start the series with the first post on OSINT courses covering both, free and paid courses.

1. SEC497: Practical Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) by SANS Institute
   Type: Paid (Approx $8000)
   Mode: Online and Offline
   Review: The course quality is really amazing, but it’s not affordable for majority of the people. We don’t recommend investing such a big amount in a course, better follow other paid courses which are affordable or go with the free ones.

2. SEC587: Advanced Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) by SANS Institute
   Type: Paid (Approx $8000)
   Mode: Online and Offline
   Review: The course quality is amazing but again, it’s not affordable. We don’t recommend this course as it’s really very expensive. Secondly, you can follow it the best way only if you have completed SEC497 earlier.

3. Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) Fundamentals by TCM Security
   Type: Paid (Membership - $29.99)
   Mode: Online
   Review: The course content is awesome. You can go for it if you want to follow a structured path and want to learn the fundamentals. If you have decided that you want to do a paid course on OSINT, those who can afford can take it. Purchase their all-access membership plan when you a lot of free time, so that you can learn from their course which you will be able to access for free.

4. OSINT: Open-Source Intelligence by Jeff M (via Udemy)
   Type: Paid(Ranges between $5-$50)
   Mode: Online
   Review: The course content is good. Recommended for beginner if you want to learn from a paid course and want to learn faster. Keep an eye on the price and purchase it when it has price of $5.

5. A Beginner's Guide to OSINT by Dheeraj Yadav (via Udemy)
   Type: Paid(Free for You)
   Mode: Online
   Review: The course is still under development. We are trying to get all our recording work done and then will update everything at once. Redeem the free coupon and start the course after 15jan2024. If coupon is expired for you, join our telegram channel where we share free coupon every month and you can purchase it in cheap anytime.
   Free Coupon

6. Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) in 5 Hours by The Cyber Mentor
   Type: Free
   Mode: Online
   Review: Recommended for beginners. This is a beginner’s friendly course, worth the time for beginners, others don’t go for it. Instead, directly explore their GitHub repo for this course and move ahead.
   Click here for Github Link

7. OSINT at Home by Bendobrown
   Type: Free
   Mode: Online
   Review: Highly recommended for all. For beginners, watch all videos in sequence, others, filter out the videos by yourself.

8. Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) by Hacker-arise
   Type: Free
   Mode: Online
   Review: It’s a type of blog format course, good for those who loves reading. Content quality is really good.

9. An Introduction to Open-Source Intelligence by Security Blue Team
   Type: Free
   Mode: Online
   Review: It’s an active learning-based course. Recommended for all. You will enjoy doing the exercises.

10. Open-source Intelligence by Basel Institute of Governance
    Type: Online
    Mode: Online
    Review: Again, it’s one more learning-based course, highly recommended for all.

That’s it for this post, see you guys in the next post which will be released Tomorrow. Subscribe to the newsletter if you haven’t yet.

Read the new issue of this series by clicking on the below link -

Note: This post is completed based on my own knowledge, experience and opinion’s. No promotion/affiliate is involved in this.

Subscribe now