2024 OSINT Recap: Center of Excellence in Social Links

Useful materials and insights from the OSINT industry

The year 2024 marked the second year of my OSINT CoE department—a truly productive and fascinating period. In this article, I will present a comprehensive list of our materials and achievements. I am confident you will find something valuable for you here!

I am proud of my exceptional team: Costanza Piras, Bruno Alonso, Polina Aleksandrova, Ivan Kravtsov ❤️, and, of course, our colleagues from Social Links who supported us.

Let me remind you that this is the second recap; I made another one for 2023 a year ago.

Due to the large amount of content, this article may be truncated if you’re reading it in your email client. In that case, open the full version on the website. Table of Contents is on the left in the Substack interface ;)

Enjoy reading and exploring the links below!

Short Summary

We:

• conducted numerous investigations and research projects;

• prepared a variety of international cases showcasing the value of OSINT methods and tools;

• presented cases at webinars, conferences, and both on-site and offline workshops, as well as in articles;

• launched the SL-OCP1 OSINT Certification;

• contributed to open-source tools and significantly improved our flagship investigation platform, Crimewall.

Our cases include (but are not limited to) cybercrime investigations, due diligence, anti-money laundering and asset tracing, threat intelligence and exposure assessment, public safety and counter-terrorism, anti-drug trafficking, and social listening.

Articles

Social Links blog materials are available here.

OSINT tools tutorials and tips:

• OSINT Start: Launch an Investigation in Seconds

• SL Crimewall Beginner Tips and Tricks

• SL Crimewall Intermediate Tips and Tricks

• SL Professional Transforms to Crack Cases

• Crimewall Product Updates Q2, 2024

• Crimewall Product Updates Q3, 2024

• Crimewall Tips: Investigating Illegal Activities on Telegram

• 5 Alternative Crimewall Features to Boost Any Investigation

Investigation cases:

• OSINT: A Remedy for the Ills of Conspiracy Groups

• Investigating Illegal Content on the Dark Web with Stealer Logs

• OSINT: A Weapon against Insurance Fraud

• OSINT in Public Transport: Sources and Use Cases

• Breaches and Stealer Logs: Darknet Goldmines

• The Bangladesh Crisis: An OSINT Timeline

Personal blogs:

• Profiling CSAM consumers, reposted by Infostealers/Hudson Rock (Bruno Alonso)

• Pompompurin and BreachForums (Bruno Alonso)

• PGP use on the Darkweb (Bruno Alonso)

• OPSEC (1): Introduction to Operational Security (Bruno Alonso)

• Skillset for OSINT Analysts to Get Started - Part 1 (Polina Alexandrova)

• Skillset for OSINT Analysts to Get Started - Part 2 (Costanza Piras)

• Timeline - Chronological Data Visualisation for Your Investigations (Polina Alexandrova)

• OSINT Methodology: How to Investigate Illegal Content in Telegram Chats (Soxoj)

• FRAVIA: The Art of Searching: e-book (Soxoj)

SL-OCP1 certification

At Social Links, we put a huge emphasis on making our product functionalities super user-friendly. It makes total sense to get first-hand training and learn things in a systematic way—so we’re introducing our OSINT Certification Program (OCP).

Read more in the blog article Discover the Social Links OSINT Certification Program (OCP). For the application, just contact us at osint@sociallinks.io.

SL-OCP2, focused on advanced OSINT skills, is coming soon!

Open Source Tools

This year, we focused primarily on developing and improving Crimewall, as well as implementing custom functionality enhancements for SL key clients. However, we still managed to find time to release some of our developments, including those showcasing the capabilities of SL API.

Social Links API GitHub repository with scripts examples:

• Search by Face and Name (description, script, social media post)

• Posts Analysis (description, script, social media post)

Maigret (reborn!) - From one username to a full digital footprint

Favicorn - All-sources tool to search websites by favicons (in a collaboration with another developer)

Investigations and Research

• How to extract followers from a private Instagram account (method and privacy tips) - posts on LinkedIn, Telegram

• How to get hidden friends from a VK account - posts on LinkedIn, Telegram

• Luigi Mangione (UnitedHealthcare CEO case), comprehensive graph - posts on LinkedIn, Twitter

  

• The Russian Propaganda research (feat. The Information Laundromant) - LinkedIn post

• Wisconsin School Shooting: comprehensive graph - posts on LinkedIn, Twitter

Conferences, Meetups, and Other Events

The number of private events this year has far outweighed the public ones. However, we still have plenty to share with you!

OSINTerdam (organized by Soxoj)

Meetup #7- LinkedIn summary post

• Fabio Daniele - Mining for Meaning: exploring Narrative Intelligence with OSINT

• Nathaniel Fried and Palenath (Megadose) - [REDACTED]

Meetup #8 - LinkedIn summary post

• Jörn Weber: Elevating OSINT Investigations: The Case for Professional Tools
  Subtitle: From Commodore 64 to Cutting-Edge OSINT

• Tactical OSINT Analyst: Using AI with Facial Recognition

  

TraceLabs SearchParty CTF - a Bronze Medal 🥉: Tactical OSINT Analyst, Vance Poitier, Kate Miller, Soxoj

Osintomatico 2024

Artem Irgebaev & Soxoj: Gold Digger: mining valuable information out of inconveniently formatted data

Open source tools featured in the talk (GitHub).

KazHackStan 2024

Dmitry Danilov: The Art of Digital Investigation: The SOWEL Framework

The SOWEL framework website, LinkedIn post

Digital Investigations Conference Zurich 2024

• Costanza Piras: OSINT in Action: Combating Financial Fraud and Disinformation

• Two-Day Pre-Conference OSINT Workshop

Read more about our activities on DIC here

ISS World Europe 2024

Dmitry Danilov: Deanonymizing Darknet Forums with OSINT Tools

ISS World MEA 2024

Dmitry Danilov: How to Solve Crimes by Exploring Behavioral Patterns and the Schemes of Social Networks

Dmitry Danilov: Visual Forensics: Digital Crime Walls in Modern Detective Work

Webinars and Interviews

Almost every month, Social Links host webinars where we showcase our investigative functionality, discuss high-profile cases, and explain how to apply OSINT methodology in your work. Exclusively for this blog, I’m sharing videos of our webinars from last year.

• The Private Investigator’s OSINT Toolkit (Ivan Kravtsov)

• Essential OSINT techniques for LEA work (Ivan Kravtsov and Georgy Sharonov)

• Stealer Logs for Investigations: A New Era in OSINT (Sonya Oronova and Lindsay Whyte, Constella)

• Enhancing AML Investigations with OSINT (Ivan Kravtsov and Veronika Wildenberg)

• Maximizing Investigation Efficiency: Saving Time with OSINT (Bruno Alonso and Dmitry Krykanov)

OSINT & SOCMINT for Corporate Security and Brand Protection: A Winning Combo (Ivan Kravtsov and Veronika Wildenberg)

• Investigating drug trafficking with OSINT (Ivan Kravtsov and Georgy Sharonov)

• The power of breaches and stealer logs (Sonya Oronova)

• Deanonymize and uncover key data with SL Crimewall (Polina Alexandrova)

• SL CRIMEWALL: Harnessing Leaks for Investigations (Ivan Kravtsov)

• Undercover Investigation: Tracing Assets with Fake Identities (Bruno Mortier and Dmitry Danilov)

Outro

2024 has truly been a productive year for my team. We continue to grow professionally and accomplish even more amazing things. In 2025, I will personally be more focused on developing our investigative platform – stay tuned for some exciting news!

A big thank you to everyone we’ve crossed paths with, and apologies if I forgot anything… and let’s OSINT! 🤘