OSINT Investigations

Find, verify and document information from public sources the way professional investigators do. Each chapter is a hands-on lab: you run the technique in your own isolated lab machine, capture the real output, and learn to reproduce it unaided. The labs cover people, usernames, email, phone numbers, images, documents, domains, maps, business records, and AI tools for correlation, geolocation, translation and verification.

Level: Intermediate
Ages: 18 and up
Length: 23 lab chapters
Format: Hands-on labs with instructor support
Instructor: Wesley Swann, author of OSINT 2027: The Hands-On Lab Manual

Read this first. This is not legal advice, and laws vary by place. You are responsible for authorization: run labs only against assets you own or have written permission to test. Read the Legal and Ethics Notice lesson before Chapter 1.

Ask about the next OSINT class

How the labs work

Every lab in this book follows one capture protocol. Follow it from the first chapter.

1. Log your session. Before each lab, start a terminal log so every command and its output is saved with a time stamp. For example, run mkdir -p ~/lab && script -a ~/lab/session-$(date +%F).log and type exit when you finish. Do not type API keys or passwords while the log is running; enter them before you start it, or stop logging first.
2. Paste output into the CAPTURE slots. Each step ends with a line that begins CAPTURE. Run the command, then paste the real output from your terminal below that line. The book does not show example results, so your capture is the only record of what the tool returned.
3. Record the tool version and the date. Fill in the “Tool version” and “Date run” blanks on each CAPTURE line. Write n/a for the tool version on a step that only runs shell built-ins. Tools and sites change, and a result is only meaningful with the version and date beside it. Keep your logs and captures together in one folder per chapter. You will use them again in the report template at the end of the book.

Lessons

1. Legal and Ethics Notice
2. Chapter 1: Build the Lab VM and Snapshot It
3. Chapter 2: Browser Isolation and Profiles
4. Chapter 3: Research Personas the Legal Way
5. Chapter 4: Install Scripts and the Version Ledger
6. Chapter 5: People
7. Chapter 6: Usernames
8. Chapter 7: Email
9. Chapter 8: Phone Numbers
10. Chapter 9: Images
11. Chapter 10: Documents and Metadata
12. Chapter 11: Domains and IP Addresses
13. Chapter 12: Maps and Geolocation
14. Chapter 13: Business Records
15. Chapter 14: LLM-Assisted Correlation and Note Triage
16. Chapter 15: AI-Assisted Image Geolocation
17. Chapter 16: Translation and Multilingual Sources
18. Chapter 17: Agent-Orchestrated Recon
19. Chapter 18: Spotting AI-Generated Images, Video and Audio
20. Chapter 19: Verifying AI Output
21. Chapter 20: Local Models for Sensitive Data
22. Chapter 21: Breach-Search Tools and Hygiene
23. Chapter 22: Verifying Breach Hits
24. Chapter 23: Paste Sites, Leak Repositories and Public Datasets
25. Appendix A: Ledger Template

Copyright © 2027 Wesley Swann. All rights reserved.

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