OSINT-1 How to utilise search engines

Some Operators

• “”
  Force an exact-match search. The double quotation marks will help return results including keywords inside.
• *
  An asterisk character, known as a wildcard, to match one or more words in a phrase
• OR
  Search for X or Y. This will return results related to X or Y, or both. Note: The pipe ( | ) operator can also be used in place of “OR.”
• AND
  Similar to OR ( | ), can be used in place of “&” Note: It doesn’t really make much difference for regular searches, as Google defaults to “AND” anyway. But it’s very useful when paired with other operators.
• ( )
  Group multiple terms or search operators to control how the search is executed, like (A | B)
• -
  Exclude a term or phrase. In our example, any pages returned will be related to jobs but not Apple (the company).
• define:
  A dictionary built into Google, basically. This will display the meaning of a word in a card-like result.
• cache:
  Returns the most recent cached version of a web page (providing the page is indexed).
• filetype:
  Restrict results to those of a certain filetype. E.g., PDF, DOCX, TXT, PPT, CSV, xlsx,etc.
• site:
  Limit results to those from a specific website. For example, Phd site:cardiff.ac.uk, it will return phd related information in the Cardiff university website.
• intitle:
  Find pages with a certain word (or words) in the title. For example, intitle:Cardiff, any results containing the word “Cardiff” in the title tag will be returned.
• intext:
  Find pages containing a certain word (or words) somewhere in the content.
• allintext:
  Similar to “intext,” return results containing all of the specified words.
• AROUND(X)
  Find pages containing two words or phrases within X words of each other. For example, Cardiff AROUND(5) COMSC, must be present in the content and no further than five words apart.
• year..year
  Search for a range of numbers. Like Coronavirus 2019..2020
• inurl:
  Find pages with a certain word (or words) in the URL.

Go back to the previous versions of pages Archive/TimeTravel
Resource for Google Dorks

OSINT ONE PRACTICE

1. Run one search to find results that include the exact phrase “I love Cardiff because” or “I love Swansea because”

2. Re-do the search looking for ‘love’ and ‘hate’ for both cities (so you should be getting four different kinds of results)

3. How long has a Plaid Cymru page existed on Wikipedia?

4. How much will a fender telecaster cost you in Glasgow in 2018 (via Gumtree)?

5. This is a picture that was tweeted and became a story in France in 2018-19. https://www.telerama.fr/sites/tr_master/files/styles/simplecrop1000/public/dm6wgm-xsaaviem_0.jpg?itok=ybyPVEUc&sc=d770fd22e0ec64161a3683ab0433b41e

6. It was posted with this accompanying text, Ce soir à 17h40 rue Jean Lantier 75001 Paris. Voilà à quoi servent les impôts locaux des Parisiens à payer les agents de propreté à roupiller, on comprend pourquoi Paris est si dégueulasse. Find the twitter handle of the person who posted it, how she describes herself in her profile and when she joined twitter.

7. Find someone renting a room in a house anywhere in the UK who doesn’t want any musicians moving in. What else do they not want?

8. Find the Jomec academic staff page as it looked at least five days ago

9. Find people discussing this youtube video online – the end of ‘Agile’ – but not on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M

10. Find online coverage of Big Ben being rung for Brexit that doesn’t mention the Prime Minister

11. Find a list of suppliers used by Network Rail

12. www.milliontall.com doesn’t exist anymore. What colour was ‘milliontall’ written in, when it still ran?

13. Find any document from the HSE [the Irish NHS] marked ‘private and confidential’ that concerns a HSE investigation

14. Find 3 stories on Wales Online that mention Cardiff Crown Court and that were published in August 2019

15. A user identified as ‘Ronald G. Cufley’ reviewed the 7th edition of Bazzell on UK Amazon in December 2019. How long has he been offering customer reviews? Of what?

16. Find a forum where fans of the Cardiff City football team chat

17. Find the original twitter post by the Spanish police in July 2019 that this story is based on: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49248764