NeedleStack

Open-source intelligence (OSINT) has been playing out on the world stage in a big way over the past few weeks. Social media platforms like TikTok have become insightful sources for analysts to track Russian military movements in the Ukraine invasion. Tracking disinformation on various sites shows a war being fought with more than tanks — Russia is using culture and the power of the media. And auxiliary intelligence is a growing resource in governments gaining OSINT.

In our first listeners live episode, Matt and Jeff take questions from our live audience. They cover resources that can be useful in finding the best OSINT tools; advantages to using native-language search engines in international research; free training for OSINT analysts; and managing attribution to access the information you need. Listen on-demand, or sign up for our upcoming live events at authentic8.com/events/needlestack.

Disguising your digital fingerprint is imperative to the results of online research. This episode, the hosts dive into the tools that can help investigators understand and manage their identity online. From websites to browsers, extensions and full-service managed attribution platforms, here are the tools you need to blend in online.

You’re conducting your research. It seems like it’s going successfully. But unbeknownst to you, the subject of your research is onto you, knows you’re snooping and is working to spoil your investigation. This is thanks to your digital fingerprint being passed by your browser. In this panel discussion, we dive deeeep into all the ways details of your digital fingerprint can be discovered — even when using tools built to disguise it — and how adversaries can take advantage of it.

In an effort to conceal their identity, online researchers may turn to the solutions they know: VPNs, Inocgnito Mode and free Wi-Fi. While these solutions may appear to be working on the surface, there’s lots of details still being disclosed to sites they visit. Tune in to learn what these solutions miss and what’s needed to truly blend in with the crowd to ensure quality research.

Blending in with the crowd is critical to performing successful online research. If adversaries or the targets of your research can recognize your digital fingerprint, you could get blocked, targeted, infected, identified or tracked. In this episode, we’ll explain what’s in a digital fingerprint, how traditional browsers share this information, what it can mean for research projects and what’s needed to manage it.

Tune into the podcast every week to learn how to hone your online research skills with better tradecraft. Hear from our host Matt Ashburn and co-host Jeff Phillips as they share tips, tricks and tools to protect your identity, stay safe while you search and improve the efficiency of your investigations. Learn more at authentic8.com/needlestack.

The use cases for online research have exploded in recent years and have become critical practices not just in government and law enforcement agencies, but also in commercial organizations of all sizes. We look at the impact online research has, what are the risks to those who perform sensitive research and what needs to change in the practice.