OSINT Manual

Each chapter ends with Practical Exercises and a Suggested Approach section — this is meant to be worked through, not just read.

1. Chapter 1: Principles of OSINT, Methodology & the Legal/Ethical Framework
   What OSINT actually is, passive vs. active collection, and the legal/ethical lines that matter.
2. Chapter 2: The Research Cycle: Hypothesis → Collection → Verification → Correlation
   The Intelligence Cycle, the NATO Admiralty code, thinking like an adversary, and the core hypothesis-driven loop.

1. Chapter 3: Advanced Search & Google Dorking
   How search engines index the web, Google dorking, cache/archives, and pivoting methodology.
2. Chapter 4: Identity Investigation
   Email forensics, digital identity, username correlation, deanonymization, and confidence scoring.
3. Chapter 5: Social Media Intelligence
   Pattern-of-life analysis, cross-platform correlation, social network analysis, and mis/dis/malinformation.
4. Chapter 6: Image & Media Forensics
   Reverse image search, EXIF/IPTC/XMP metadata, manipulation detection, and video frame extraction.
5. Chapter 7: Geolocation & Mapping
   The 7-step geolocation workflow, environmental indicators, mapping tools, and historical geolocation.

1. Chapter 8: Dark Web & Deep Web Investigations
   Surface, deep, and dark web distinctions, safe access, and what's actually there.
2. Chapter 9: Domain & Network Infrastructure OSINT
   WHOIS, DNS, subdomain enumeration, and internet-wide scanning.
3. Chapter 10: Financial Intelligence & Cryptocurrency Tracing
   Traditional financial intelligence plus cryptocurrency wallet and transaction tracing.
4. Chapter 11: Automating OSINT with Python & APIs
   APIs, JSON, scraping, regex, and automating the routine parts of OSINT work.
5. Chapter 12: Corporate Due Diligence
   Corporate structure, official registries, shell-company tells, and a due-diligence workflow.
6. Chapter 13: Disinformation & Verification
   Verification methodology and the current state of AI-generated content and deepfakes.

1. Chapter 14: OPSEC for Investigators
   Threat modeling, attribution risk, browser/account separation, and sock puppet discipline.
2. Chapter 15: Analysis, Correlation & Report Writing
   Report structure, confidence scoring, and a full worked capstone example.

1. Chapter 16: OSINT for Counter-Terrorism & Radicalization Indicators
   Behavioral/linguistic radicalization indicators, Explainable AI (XAI), crowd-sourced intelligence (Crosint), chaos-theory pattern detection in large datasets, and legal/ethical guardrails.

See also the Appendix: Tools & Resources.