OSINT, Open Source Intelligence, is the big buzz word of the day. I find this interesting as I have been speaking about it for over 20 years. The funniest part is OSINT can trace its history all the way back to the 1800’s.

Now before we go any further keep in mind the basis for all this can be found in my Book “OSINT for the staffing World” which is a beginner’s guide to OSINT for the Staffing world. After that, I suggest reading Open Source Intelligence Techniques by Michael Bazzell and even taking his certification course at https://inteltechniques.com/.

I have often spoke about different Tools, Methods and Tricks level (TMaT) under the OSINT umbrella. I have done so in a way that puts them into levels from 1-2. These levels very closely align with the levels of the web. In this post, I will further explain them.

Levels of the web:

L0/LS -Common or Clear Web -Social Networks, Search Engines, etc

L1 -Surface Web -Blogs, Forums, closed Social Networks

L2 -Bergie Web -Web Archives, Torrents, etc

L3 -Deep Web -Spiders, VR, etc

L4 -DarkWeb or Charter web -You need TOR for this, Shell Networking, etc

L5 is where the danger starts and no reason for you to go there. The 3 layers below L5 are as much Myth as anything but they end with L8 the Primarch System that controls the internet itself.

So TMaT levels are really 2 kinds that work at each level of the web.

TMat 1 -These are tools that work on one place to find or validate the info and require mainstream information to work such as name, email, phone, address, etc. An example of this is Facebook which is a on Level 0 of the web and a TMaT level 1 tool

TMaT 2 -These tools that can work on multiple places to find or validate info and can work with info other than mainstream. An example of this would be Google Image search from a Facebook image which is a Level 0 of the web and a TMaT level 2 tool.

So perhaps a summation of sorts is TMaT and were it fits is depending on what it does and were it works. If it requires non mainstream info to work and it looks at info from a Web archive it would be Web Level 2 TMaT Level 2 or a WTMaT (Web level Tools, Methods and Tricks level)  22.

Just remember TMaT 1 is mainstream info dependent and general one source, and TMaT 2 is non mainstream info dependent and can be multiple sources. So TMaT 2 is more than TMaT 1.

As to the web I tend to use what we do the most so I equate them as follow

L0- web surfing/social

L1- blogging

L2- Archives-old stuff

L3- Spiders

L4- TOR

That’s all folks

Until next time

May the Source be with you!