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What is the OSINT Framework?

By Nico Dekens | April 25, 2025

In an increasingly data-rich world, open-source intelligence (OSINT) has become a crucial part of investigative work for investigators, analysts, cybersecurity professionals, journalists, law enforcement, and researchers. Whether you’re tracking down a person of interest, digital footprint, verifying online identities, or conducting threat assessments, having access to the right tools is critical. The OSINT Framework simplifies

ShadowDragon Commentary: How to Scale Investigations Using Open-Source Intelligence

By Daniel Clemens / October 13, 2023

Recently, ShadowDragon CEO, dclemens, contributed an article to Security Management Magazine for their October 2023 organized crime issue. In the piece, he offers firsthand insights into how investigators can improve

How OSINT Differs from Traditional Cyber Threat Intelligence?

By Sandy M / July 25, 2023

While there may be some minor overlap, there are major distinctions between traditional Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) and the more advanced Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). The efficiency, effectiveness, and approach

OSINT Investigator Training 101: Building a Foundation for Success

By Olivia Gransback / June 20, 2023

Today’s investigators and analysts using online sources to investigate cases are often so focused on where to click, that they don’t even realize what their tools are doing in the

Reflections on RSA Conference 2023: OSINT and Beyond

By Daniel Clemens / June 5, 2023

Now a few weeks removed and recovered from the chaos of the RSA Conference, I wanted to share my thoughts on the 2023 event (the bad and the good). As

OSINT Methods To Investigate Suspected AI Generated Content

By Nico Dekens / May 19, 2023

The proliferation of content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) is just beginning. Recent years haveseen online accounts, run by bots, create fake news articles, divisive social media posts, fraudulentproduct reviews,

ShadowDragon Commentary: OSINT vs Classified Secrets

By Daniel Clemens / April 11, 2023

In a recent opinion piece for The Cipher Brief, Gregory Sims, former CIA Clandestine Service for over thirty years, including multiple field tours as Chief and Deputy Chief of CIA

The Impact of Bad Energy Policy on Cybercrime

By Daniel Clemens / March 29, 2023

dclemens, Founder & CEO, ShadowDragon  Is climate change the cause of higher energy prices? Likely not. That being said, there is common confusion surrounding energy policy and basic economics. The

Sportradar Case Study: Deep Background Checks, Organizational Integrity, and Fraud Investigations

By Sandy M / March 20, 2023

Investigating integrity and criminality in commerce is a daunting task that requires access to vast amounts of information and complex organizational analysis. The scale rises considerably when investigations are international

OSINT Observations from ShadowDragon Experts: Moldova

By Nico Dekens / March 15, 2023

NicoDekens, Director of Intelligence and Innovation Collection, ShadowDragon You Might Also Enjoy… Insights Success Magazine names ShadowDragon one of the “The 10 Best” Navigating Maritime OSINT, Sanctions Compliance, and the

ShadowDragon OSINT Experts Share Tips for Keeping Children Safe Online

By Elliott Anderson / March 6, 2023

You Might Also Enjoy… What’s in an email address? The 9 Biggest Challenges of an OSINT Investigation Spotting the Signs: How Social Media and the Dark Web can Reveal Human

Diving Deeper: What Past Attackers Tell Us About Bryan Kohberger

By Daniel Clemens / January 11, 2023

After six weeks of investigation, on Dec. 30, 2022 authorities arrested Bryan Kohberger as the key suspect in the quadruple murders of four University of Idaho students. This case (which

Siren Forms Strategic Partnership with ShadowDragon

By Sandy M / October 27, 2022

Market Leading Technologies Combine to Provide Powerful Investigative Solution You Might Also Enjoy… Cybersecurity is Everyone’s Business: Learn How to Combat it Introducing ShadowDragon’s Horizon Monitor. Navigating Election Monitoring: Insights

ShadowDragon Combines Capabilities with Chorus Intelligence

By Sandy M / September 15, 2022

September 15, 2022 – Virginia Beach, VA – Chorus Intelligence (“Chorus”) has powered up their digital intelligence platform by embedding SocialNet from ShadowDragon within it. This combined capability provides law

ShadowDragon Expands Partnerships for OSINT Collection

By Sandy M / September 7, 2022

Hoover, AL – As the sophistication of organized cyber threats increases, so does the need for cooperation to catch the perpetrators of these malicious acts. ShadowDragon™, a leading provider of

SocialNet is now available on-demand through King & Union Avalon

By Sandy M / March 15, 2021

ALEXANDRIA, VA, UNITED STATES, March 15, 2021 / — Data and investigative platform companies King & Union and ShadowDragon today announced an integration agreement that gives cybersecurity analysts on-demand access to ShadowDragon’s

You want to build a Platform? ..What Platform Should I use?

By Daniel Clemens / August 9, 2020

The echo’s of investors had started the buzz of the need for new investigative / intelligence platforms a great deal more than there had been in the past few years.

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Into the Dark Webs

By Brooks M / May 27, 2020

What is the DarkWeb The dark web sounds scary, but in reality, it is anything you cannot get to via Google, or that uses a masked IP address. The classification

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Where does operational security begin?

By Elliott Anderson / May 20, 2020

Over the course of the last few months, we’ve blogged about finding bad guys by guessing emails, mapping friends, understanding emotional behavior, and leveraging laziness and poor password habits.  All

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Rate Limits in Data Visualization

By Josh C / May 13, 2020

One of the most frustrating things to happen in any data visualization software is for you to run a query and get back the notification: “This result returns more nodes

Becoming Dark Web Rambo

By Elliott Anderson / May 6, 2020

There’s a lot of mystery that surrounds the dark web–surprisingly, even in the information security space.  I’ve met a huge swath of capable engineers and developers who can explain the

Cutting your teeth on ShadowDragon’s advanced CTF

By Elliott Anderson / April 29, 2020

We’ve talked in recent weeks about the importance of training and the methodology behind it.  Much of the OSINT work we do is focused on the social aspects and footprint

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Additional Insights into Iranian Cyber Espionage | APT33

By Daniel Clemens / April 24, 2020

Earlier this week FireEye/Mandiant had released a blog entitled “Insights into Iranian Cyber Espionage”detailing the targets within the Aerospace and Energy sectors being targeted. To compliment their post we wanted

Hacking in the Middle East

By Josh C / April 24, 2020

In the past, we have looked into a hacker who comes from Iran by the name of Mrb3hz4d. Now if we take some of the information we saw from his

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Data vs. Intelligence

By Josh C / April 22, 2020

It would take about 3 minutes to teach someone how to collect data on a single individual. That is easy to do. You poke around and find out all you

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Fishing with a Subaru

By Elliott Anderson / April 15, 2020

There comes a time in some OSINT investigations where we have accurately identified our target’s profiles, lifestyle, and communication platforms, but we still aren’t quite to the point of pinpointing

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Demystifying the Dark Web: Part 3

By Josh C / April 1, 2020

After looking at the structure of both the dark web and normal web, we can now start to see why so many people want the benefits Tor gives, especially the

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Filtering Out Noise

By Brooks M / March 25, 2020

When starting a project in OIMonitor, you are tempted to cast a wide net and grab from every source. This will bring in a lot of hits and you may

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Background Checks & Due Diligence

By Elliott Anderson / March 11, 2020

Many years ago, when I was in college, I had a job at a large retailer.  It involved all of the normal retail-y things: stocking, checking, unloading trucks, helping customers,

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Heat Maps: Form Over Function

By Josh C / March 6, 2020

Since movies took over displaying intelligence, we have seen crazy maps and charts attempt to display intelligence and seem “futuristic.” Here, we can see an example of a heat map: 

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Demystifying the Dark Web: Part 2

By Josh C / March 4, 2020

This is Part 2 of our 3-part series on demystifying the dark web. In Part 1, we looked at how the regular internet works at a networking layer. Today, we

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Password Maths

By Brooks M / February 26, 2020

As a follow up to our last blog about password reuse and the recent data breach of Disney, I would like to talk about how to create strong passwords and

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Unmasking a carder with OSINT

By Elliott Anderson / February 19, 2020

Today, we will be exploring the world of carding a bit and following the path of a kid on his way to becoming a full-fledged carder.  I spent about an

Demystifying the Dark Web: Part 1

By Josh C / February 12, 2020

This post is part of a 3-part series that explains the difference between normal internet and the dark web, and how some actors use the dark web. Today we are

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Tracking an Outbreak

By Brooks M / January 29, 2020

I recently setup a project in OIMonitor to track the mentions of infectious diseases mentioned in the news. I immediately got results, though not all of it was good. One

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Exploring OSINT, War Stories & OSINT with (NicoDekens) Dutch_OSINTguy

By Sandy M / January 21, 2020

Nico, (dutch_osintguy) is our Director of Intelligence and Collection Innovation and has a background as an (all source) Intelligence Analyst in the Dutch Law Enforcement. He analyzed murder cases, international narcotics

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Iran and OSINT Hunting for Fun & Profit.

By Elliott Anderson / January 15, 2020

Today, I’m going to go on a very basic hunting adventure. Every so often, I do stuff like this for “fun”.  There’s no deep takeaway here –– just some basic

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What Will OSINT/PAI and Collection at Scale Look like for 2020?

By Daniel Clemens / January 11, 2020

2020 will be eventful and likely one of the most historical years containing change, balancing the tension between change, conflict, and hopefully peace in a long time. When reflecting on

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Iran Hype – Past and Present Recollections

By Daniel Clemens / January 6, 2020

On September 11th, 2012, US embassies had been hit with attacks known as the “Benghazi Attacks.” In online correlation, attacks that had been referenced as “Operation Ababil” had begun as

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What’s in an email address?

By Elliott Anderson / December 17, 2019

A few weeks ago we went over an interesting way to pivot from breached data passwords to a target by virtue of the lazy way many people reuse the same

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The Problem with Technology Keywords

By Josh C / December 4, 2019

Big data, AI, machine learning, block chain, and every other cool new tech words are all really just that–words. To a developer or computer scientist, they are a type of

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