The main of aim of writing this blog is to help you guys in setting up your virtual environment for OSINT.
Before we deep dive into to installing Linux and popular OSINT tools, let me get you familiar with some OS which are specifically designed for OSINT. I will be mentioning some of the popular ones along with their pros and cons and my personal opinion on those, so you guys can decide which one suits best for you.
- TraceLabs OSINT VM(Free) —
This OS is specifically designed for Tracelabs search party CTF(Crowdsourced OSINT to Find Missing Persons), so it has most of the easiest processing by installing tools by a single script which will install all tools we mainly be use in SOCMINT and HUMINT.
Official Website — https://www.tracelabs.org/initiatives/osint-vm
Download — https://github.com/tracelabs/tlosint-vm/releases
It supports intel based system. For Mac, they are trying it to make it compatible, so check that once as maybe they have released a mac supported version after i have published this blog.
Check the download section in this page : https://www.tracelabs.org/initiatives/osint-vm
Pros — I suppose best for HUMINT and SOCMINT as it provides installation of all popular tools by just a single script.
Cons — Other VM provides for functionality and feasibility for other tasks.
Personal Opinion — I have used their OS in past and it was really good experience but since they have recently done many updates and are still updating it, i guess it would have been more awesome, must give it a try.
- TSRUGI Linux (Free) -
This OS is specifically designed for digital forensic, malware analysis and OSINT.
Official Website — https://tsurugi-linux.org/
Download — https://tsurugi-linux.org/downloads.php
Pros — Really very useful when you exploring or interested in learning other fields too like digital forensics, incident response and malware response.
Cons- Better options are available if you are only interested in OSINT.
After reading reviews about this on google, i can say you must give it a try.
Personal Opinion — I haven’t used this yet but would surely try it when i will start learning malware analysis and digital forensics.
- TAILS (Free)-
A portable operating system that protects against
surveillance and censorship. This is more of a like a OS installed in USB, once the USB is ejected from the device, all the data will be erased. Similarly, when you again plug in the USB, you would be able to use Tails again.
It leaves no trace on your computer, that’s why it is widely used by journalists and for tor browsing in some countries for bypassing censorship laws.
You can read more about it on the official website of it.
Official Website- https://tails.net/index.en.html
Download — https://tails.net/install/index.en.html
These are the 3 most popular OS for OSINT investigation in my opinion. Their may have some other OS better than these, if you have knowledge of any, let me know and i will update this writeup.
Despite of having all these OS specifically designed for OSINT, i personally use Kali Linux itself. I have done my own setup of that as per my need. I install tools whenever i need and i suppose that you can also follow that.
In future, we ourself also have plans to develop our own OS for OSINT investigation but their is a long way for that, till that enjoy your learning with the existing ones.
In the next blog, we will be learning about some of the most popular tools used in OSINT along with their installation and usage.
That’s it for today. Tomorrow, we will be learning about how to setup your environment for OSINT.
If i missed something, let me know, so we can cover that topic or point in upcoming blogs.
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