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Sep 26, 2019

OSINT stands for Open-source intelligence. It is the process of collecting data from public sources to be used in an intel context.

Google search query: OSINT

Result: Search results for you to review 🙂

I won’t go into more detail about what OSINT is or what is used for. Instead, I am going to focus on reviewing a tool that I found on Github to perform OSINT searches.

The tool is called Skiptracer. Find the code here: https://github.com/xillwillx/skiptracer

Further disclosure, I didn’t write this code, use at your own risk. Risk means, if you install it, your computer will self destroy in 3, 2, …, just kidding.

I borrowed the author’s great description of this tool for my blog post. The author describes it as “OSINT framework…on a ramen noodle budget.”

Installing Skiptracer

Here is when I am going to lose a lot of readers.

To install this tool you have to type some commands on your command terminal.

…page views just dropped…bounce rate 99%.

If you are still reading. I will assure you that it’s not that hard. It uses Python2.

Here is a good tutorial for installing Python on Windows and Mac: https://realpython.com/installing-python/

It will take you just five minutes to install it. It’s that easy.

Let’s start by cloning the repo.

OK…mmm. Most likely this is a good tool if you know what Github is or you are somehow familiar with Github.

Open your terminal, go to wherever you want to download the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/xillwillx/skiptracer.git skiptracer
$ cd skiptracer

Now you need to set a virtual environment to use Python2.

I lost you, right?

I need to build a sort of container in my computer to install this tool and it won’t affect anything else in my system.

$ virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python env
$ source env/bin/activate

Now we have to install the requirements for skiptracer:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

That’s it. That wasn’t so horrible, right?

Using Skiptracer

Just use this command:

$ python skiptracer.py

Now you will get this awesome menu.

Skiptracer menu

The menu has these lookup options:

  • Email
  • Name
  • Phone
  • ScreenName
  • License plate
  • Domain

OSINT Email

Let’s start with Email. I googled this: Bill Gates email and got this: bill.gates@microsoft.com

On the menu I typed 1 to select Email.

Now I got this menu:

Skiptracer menu

The menu has these options:

[1] All - Run all modules associated to the email module group
[2] LinkedIn - Check if user exposes information through LinkedIn
[3] HaveIBeenPwned - Check email against known compromised networks
[4] Myspace - Check if users account has a registered account
[5] AdvancedBackgroundChecks - Run email through public page of paid access
[6] Reset Target - Reset the Email to new target address
[7] Back - Return to main menu

When trying option [5] AdvancedBackgroundChecks, I got these results:

Skiptracer menu

The results show this data:

  • Aliases
  • Phone numbers
  • Email addresses
  • Address, street, city
  • Previous address

OSINT Phone

Let’s go back to the previous menu and try a phone number. I googled spacex los angeles and got the phone number listed on Google Maps.

Back in our Terminal, selecting the Phone option shows this menu:

Skiptracer menu

The menu has these options:

[1] All - Run all modules associated to the phone module group
[2] TruePeopleSearch - Run email through public page of paid access
[3] WhoCalld - Reverse phone trace on given number
[4] 411 - Reverse phone trace on given number
[5] AdvancedBackgroundChecks - Run number through public page of paid access

After adding the phone number, I selected the option for [1] All. It started showing some results:

  • Name, age, alias
  • Related associates
  • Addresses
  • Related phone numbers

OSINT Screenname

Back to the main menu. Let’s try Screenname.

What’s Elon Musk’s Twitter handle? On Twitter I typed Elon Musk and…

It’s @elonmusk.

The second result says @BoredElonMusk. It has 1.7M followers. Described as a parody account of Elon Musk.

Back on SkipTracer, I chose the option for Screenname

Skiptracer menu

It has these options:

[1] All - Run all modules associated to the email module group
[2] Knowem - Run screenname through to determin registered sites
[3] NameChk - Run screenname through to determin registered sites
[4] Tinder - Run screenname and grab information if registered

The results from NameChk shows:

[+] Acct Exists: https://facebook.com/BoredElonMusk                                 
[+] Acct Exists: https://twitter.com/BoredElonMusk                                  
[+] Acct Exists: https://www.instagram.com/BoredElonMusk                            
[+] Acct Exists: https://plus.google.com/+BoredElonMusk/posts            
[+] Acct Exists: https://www.reddit.com/user/BoredElonMusk/                         
[+] Acct Exists: https://www.pinterest.com/BoredElonMusk/                           
[+] Acct Exists: https://BoredElonMusk.yelp.com

And about a dozen more links.

OSINT License Plate

I tried a few vanity license plates but couldn’t find results. This requires more experimentation.

I tried these for California:

  • MLENG
  • DATAENG
  • VOID
  • JAVAENG

OSINT is an interesting process to find more data from different sourcers. You just need some basic knowledge of the command line to use this tool.

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