Bank secrecy, like doctor-patient confidentiality, is the basis of our modern world professional ethics. Of course, acting upon law, government establishments regularly get access to information on private and corporate accounts and their transactions. But whenever such information is leaked, it automatically becomes a sensation. This is exactly what happened to the recent USA Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen) data leak.

What’s inside the leak and why haven’t it been fully reported (yet)

Information, which was leaked to mass media, contains reports on suspicious transactions in the total sum of more than 2 trillion dollars. …

Instagram! One of the most popular social networks in the world. Which means millions of users and a lot of activity. Lampyre offers broad possibilities for working with Instagram in the area of OSINT. The variety of available requests allows not only searching for accounts but also analyzing their contents in different ways.

If you prefer a video version of this tutorial, you can check it out on our Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/oJXeDFmBlkI

So let’s open Lampyre and proceed to the List of Requests. There are many different requests there so we can apply filter to see only the ones we…

Last night, Matthias Wilson posted this article in his blog. He implied there, that although Lampyre is a very powerful OSINT platform, it should not be trusted. The author did a research on the background of the software and its developing company (Data Tower). Some things there are true and some are not. As to that, we’re posting to tell what the things really are.

Data Tower and Norsi-Trans are indeed connected. Some enthusiasts from Norsi-Trans are sharing with Data Tower their great experience in developing analytical systems. It helps us improve Lampyre. …

They’re everywhere. Every day thousands of fake accounts are being created for selling, fraud, disinformation and all sorts of scams. And each one of them may look and act differently. How to figure them out?

This is an issue not only for OSINT researchers. It affects everyday lives of all people.

Rash reposts may help in spreading fake information. An impulsive reply in a personal correspondence of a corporate account may assist social engineers in getting confidential data. A meeting with a supposed “potential” client from the Internet may destroy a business.

That’s why it is so important to check…

Están por todas partes. Cada día se crean miles de cuentas falsas que tienen como fin hacer ventas posteriores, estafar, difundir información falsa o realizar otras acciones deshonestas. Y cada una de ellas puede presentar un aspecto y un comportamiento diferente. ¿Cómo detectarlas?

Esta cuestión no atañe solo a los investigadores de OSINT. La solución a este problema influye en la vida real de todas las personas.

Hacer un “repost” a la ligera puede ayudar a difundir información falsa. Una respuesta poco meditada a un mensaje privado de la cuenta corporativa puede ayudar a un ingeniero social a ganarse acceso…

Echando un simple vistazo al perfil de la persona investigada usando la cuenta falsa que hemos creado para tal fin, podemos determinar la imagen que este individuo se está creando en la red y cuáles son sus posibles intereses. Esto es especialmente cierto si se estudian los perfiles de la misma persona en varias redes sociales.

Pero una investigación como esta puede pasar por alto cierta información que no es evidente, pero si es muy importante. …

Having scrolled down the profile of your person of interest, logged into your new well-prepared sock puppet, usually helps you quickly define what image this person is trying to convey and what interests he or she has. Especially if you are researching multiple accounts of the same person in different social networks. (We previously posted about such research here.)

However, one still might miss some not rather striking but sometimes very important information. Your object of interest probably pays no attention to it, but it really reveals a great deal more than the actual posts.

Today we are sharing with…

Today we’re going to talk about applying OSINT techniques and demonstrate how valuable preventive measures really are in business when checking up on potential partners.

This case is based on a true story. In order to preserve confidentiality, all personal data was changed to fictional and are not real.

Let’s be carried away in our thoughts to an IT trade-show in Los-Angeles and imagine you’re an exhibitor there. So at the event, there comes a visitor — Mr. X, he gives you his business card and suggests scheduling a meeting to discuss technical peculiarities of your solution. This business card…