Weekly Updates #0
A new version with lots of new stuff and new style.
Welcome to the first edition of Weekly Updates, your weekly summary of what happened in OSINT this week. We are trying a new format, so please share your feedback on this OSINT Updates format. If you like it, feel free to like this post. If you have any suggestions for improvement, leave a comment.
This week’s issue includes...
🔍✨ This Week in OSINT
📖Read. 🎬Watch. 🎙️Listen. To…
💡🔍 OSINT Pro Tips
📰✨ Newsletter Spotlight
🚀🛠️ OSINT for Beginners
🛠️✨ OSINT Toolbox
🔧📈 OSINT Tool Updates
🎁🔍 Mystery Box
⏳🔙 Missed Last Week?
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This Week in OSINT
Tea is a woman-only app that helps women avoid red flags before the first date with dating advice, and shows them who’s really behind the profile of the person they're dating. It provides services such as background checks, Reverse Image Search, Sex Offender Search, and Phone Number lookup. (As per their Google Play Store page)
The data of their users, including selfies (images taken for verification during signup) and voter IDs, is now going viral on the internet. It’s not a leak or breach; it’s possible that a vibe-coded app stored all the user data in a public bucket on Firebase. Some users scraped and uploaded the data to 4chan, and some even went a step further by pinpointing the user’s geolocation on Google Maps, revealing their possible home location. Want to know more, search on Google or Twitter.Pentagon suspends participation in think tank events. The Pentagon has suspended participation in all think tank and research events until further notice, according to an email sent Thursday to staff and obtained by POLITICO, a major shift in engagement from the country’s largest federal agency.
The decision comes a week after the Defense Department pulled out of the high-profile Aspen Security Forum citing “the evil of globalism” and indicating the event did not align with the Trump administration’s defense policies. Read more.
A surveillance vendor was caught exploiting a new SS7 attack to track people’s phone locations. Security researchers say they have caught a surveillance company in the Middle East exploiting a new attack capable of tricking phone operators into disclosing a cell subscriber’s location.
The attack relies on bypassing security protections that carriers have put in place to protect intruders from accessing SS7, or Signaling System 7, a private set of protocols used by the global phone carriers to route subscribers’ calls and text messages around the world. Read more.
Siren & Flashpoint partner to boost intelligence investigations. Siren and Flashpoint have entered into a strategic partnership to deliver a unified environment that aims to enhance investigation capabilities and drive intelligence-led decision-making for security and intelligence teams.
The collaboration comes at a time when geopolitical tensions and hybrid threats, combining cyber, physical, and informational tactics, are increasingly impacting both private and public sectors. Organisations are facing heightened challenges from sophisticated adversaries, and the integration between Flashpoint and Siren is designed to address these evolving risks. Read more.
Read, Watch & Listen
Read Digital Breadcrumbs: How Social Media Betrays Fugitives.
Read Advanced OSINT Techniques: Exploring Modern Network Intelligence Methods
Read Garage Aesthetics of OSINT: DIY Gadgets for Investigations & Garage Aesthetics of OSINT: DIY Gadgets for Investigations (vol.2).
Read What Can Be Found About You and Your Business Online (And Why It Matters)
Read GEOINT 001 : An introduction to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery.
Watch recordings of SLEUTHCon 2025 on YouTube.
Watch OSINT AI Tech Predicts Global Threats and Powers Risk Strategies - SEERIST's John Goolgasian.
Listen to new NeedleStack podcast episode, E86 | Using OSINT to protect celebrities and athletes.
Listen to new James Intelligence Podcast episode, Assessing NATO's funding commitment.
OSINT Pro Tips
UNISHKA's OSINT for countries - A series of articles (constantly updated), each with dozens of tools for collecting information about people, cars, domains, companies and other objects of interest in different countries.
Enter email to check if it is connected to some PGP key (it can then be used to gather information in document archives, leak databases, forums, etc).
https://keys.openpgp.org/
Newsletter Spotlight
published Time Cop: Wrangling Disordered Digital Evidence, explaining Time synchronisation techniques when your digital media gets unruly.OSINT for Beginners
A free beginner-friendly webinar on Open-Source Intelligence: Tools and Tips for Getting Started on 10 Sep, 5:30 am - 6:30 am IST. Claim free tickets now.
From the Twitterverse
@shambhugarg179 shares My Ultimate Toolkit for Blockchain & OSINT Investigations. It’s a list of 19tools useful in crypto investigations.
OSINT Toolbox
Onetime Secret - This allows you to send sensitive information in a safe way knowing it's seen by one person only. Think of it like a self-destructing message.
TripRecon - Advanced Domain Recognition and OSINT Tool. Automate the collection of subdomains, DNS records, leaks, Dorks, APIs, and more with hacker-style and visual HTML reports.
Filmot - Search within YouTube subtitles, captions and transcripts.
geomastr - Huge database of unique objects for different countries on road photos like Bollards, Fuel Stations, License Plate, Post Company, Road Lines, Street Signs, alphabet and more.
Detect AI - AI Detection & Media Verification - Advanced Testing Mode.
(Credit for this section goes to
OSINT Tool Updates
NotebookLM got some new features. Learn more.
Suggest some OSINT tools that were useful but have gone outdated now, we will try to provide an updated version of that or will build a new one from scratch. Tell your fav OSINT tool that you are missing.
Mystery Box
FR-OSINT Unleashed - The French Open Source Intelligence Survival Kit — Tips, Tools, Techniques, & the Ultimate Website Directory for France-Focused Investigators.
Missed Last Week?
Nothing important got missed last week.
Thanks for reading our newsletter. Please feel free to provide feedback and suggestions for this new version. You can contact me at @dheerajydv19 on Twitter, LinkedIn and Telegram.