Top 50 OSINT Tools That You Should Know in 2024

13 min read
Last updated: Apr 22, 2024

Intelligence gathering is the primary step in connecting the dots in cases of data breaches or rigorous testing environments. Thanks to the OSINT tools, it is easy for security and testing professionals to gather the right information at the right time to take the right action.

So, here we present the most-sorted yet useful OSINT tools list of the top fifty options for our open-source intelligence professionals. We’ve also incorporated a bonus list to provide a comprehensive guide on these intelligence tools.

Top 50 OSINT Tools List

Censys

It is a popular search engine offering the accurate and latest information about any device connecting to the internet. It can be domain names or servers. It allows complete technical and geographic details about different concepts. It covers WHOIS information, full SSL Certificate Chain information, Chrome TLS Handshake, GET response of the target website, HTTP/S body content, and 80 and 443 ports running on any server.

Wappalyzer

It is a highly useful service that allows security research professionals to identify website technologies quickly. It helps create a list of websites using different technologies while adding phone numbers and email addresses. Hence, it is ideal for tracking website technologies and finding organic data about competitors.

Jigsaw

It offers information about a specific company’s employees. It is easy to use. Select the company’s domain name and collect all the employees’ emails from different departments. It works for all the major companies, such as Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Google.

Creepy

It is a popular OSINT tool for geolocation. It offers complete geographical data from different individuals by searching social networking platforms like Facebook, Flickr, or Twitter. These results can be quickly exported in KML or CSV formats.

WebShag

It is a top server auditing tool ideal for scanning HTTP and HTTPS protocols. It is widely used in penetration testing and IT security research. It helps launch a simple scan or uses advanced HTTP authentication or proxy methods. Some of the critical features of WebShag cover port scan, URL scanning, file fuzzing, and website crawling.

Exiftool

It helps read, write, and extract metadata from files like EXIF, IPTC, GPS, XMP, JFIF, and others. It supports files from different ranges of cameras like Sony, Kodak, FujiFilm, Casio, and Canon.

IVRE

It is a popular open-source tool created based on projects like ZGrab2, ZDNS, Masscan, and Nmap. Its framework uses different tools to collect network intelligence on different hosts and then uses the MongoDB database for data storage. It offers passive reconnaissance by flow analysis, active reconnaissance using Nmap and Zmap, fingerprinting analysis, and data importing from third-party apps.

OWASP AMASS

It is a leading network mapping and reconnaissance tool widely used for general attack surface mapping tasks, DNS enumeration, and network discovery. It stresses focusing on data scraping and intel gathering on DNS protocols, SSL/TLS, and HTTP. Further, it offers API integrations with popular cybersecurity data services.

ZoomEye

It is an IoT OSINT search engine that allows users to extract public data from exposed web services and devices. It helps find IPs interacting with hosts, networks, open ports on remote servers, the total number of hosted websites and devices, and interactive maps of users hitting different devices.

Foca

Also called Fingerprinting Organizations with Collected Archives, Foca can scan, analyze, extract, and classify information from different remote web servers and their hidden information. It is a powerful OSINT tool that collects valuable data from GIF files, SVG files, Adobe InDesign, PDF, OpenOffice, and MS Office Suite.

Unicornscan

It is a popular intel-gathering tool for security research. It comes with an in-built correlation engine offering efficiency, scalability, and flexibility with different features. Unicornscan offers complete TCP/IP device/network scan, UDP protocol scanning, A/P OS identification, and asynchronous TCP banner detection, among other features.

Fierce

It is the leading IP and DNS recon tool using PERL, which helps IT experts find targeted IPs associated with domain names. After defining the target network, this tool launches several scans against the selected domains to identify vulnerable points and misconfigured networks.

OpenVAS

Also called the Open Vulnerability Assessment System, OpenVAS is the leading security framework, including different services and tools for professionals. The primary tool included in OpenVAS is the OpenVAS Scanner, which is a highly efficient tool for executing network vulnerability tests on target machines. It also offers OpenVASManager, a vulnerability management solution for storing scanned data in an SQLite database.

NMap

Also called Network Mapper, it is the security auditing tool used across local and remote hosts. The key features of NMap cover host detection, IP, DNS information detection, port detection, OS detection, and version detection. It is the leading open-source and free utility ideal for security auditing and network exploration.

Wireshark

It is a leading network protocol analyzer for capturing and analyzing network traffic. It effectively analyzes network traffic to understand network protocols. It can further help identify security issues and troubleshoot network issues.

John the Ripper

It is a quick-working OSINT tool focused on password cracking. It adopts cryptanalysis, brute-force, and dictionary attack methods to support different hash formats.

Sqlmap

It is a leading penetration testing tool that automates detecting and exploiting SQL injection flaws. It is an open-source tool that takes over database servers.

Burp Suite

It covers tools for web application security testing, automated testing, spidering web applications, intercepting, and modifying web traffic.

Nessus

It is a vulnerability scanner tool that identifies possible vulnerabilities in applications, networks, and systems. It can scan for vulnerabilities such as misconfigured devices, out-of-date software, and missing security patches.

Sleuthkit

It is a one-of-its-kind digital forensics tool for investigating and finding evidence of any system or device incident.

Cain and Abel

It is the password cracking tool used to recover forgotten or lost passwords. It can perform man-in-the-middle attacks to intercept and crack the network traffic. Further, it can crack various types of encryption, including Linux and Windows login passwords.

Social- Engineering Toolkit (SET)

It is a dedicated toolkit focusing on different social engineering attacks. It can successfully perform credential harvesting and phishing attacks.

OWASP ZAP

It stands for open-source web application security scanner. It offers automated scanners and other tools for manually finding security vulnerabilities. It is widely used by professionals and beginners in penetration testing.

OllyDbg

It is an innovative reverse engineering tool used to analyze and understand the inner workings of binary executables. This helps examine the software’s functionality and identify vulnerabilities. It can identify buffer overflows and other bugs that hackers can exploit.

NAXSI

It is a preventive tool placed in front of the web servers to protect against possible web-based attacks. It inspects the incoming HTTP traffic and blocks the malicious requests based on predefined policies and rules.

BackTrack

It covers tools for forensic analysis, vulnerability scanning, and penetration testing. These help test the security of web applications, systems, and networks and identify vulnerabilities that attackers exploit.

Bro IDS

It is an OSINT tool focusing on detecting and preventing network intrusions. It can analyze the network traffic and compare it against a set of rules to identify suspicious activities. It performs traffic analysis and packet logging.

SonarQube

It is a leading tool for code review, used to identify possible security vulnerabilities and other issues in software projects. It checks the code against predefined coding standards and best practices.

Tripwire

It is an advanced File Integrity Monitoring or FIM tool used to detect the changes in the files in the system and alert for unauthorized changes. It can be best used to detect malicious activities, configuration issues, and other events causing security incidents.

TrueCrypt

It is a cryptography tool used to encrypt data and test the encryption strength.

Honeyd

It is a trap created to detect, deflect, and study attempts to gain unauthorized access to the information systems. Ideally called the honeypot, it is the ideal security resource whose real value lies in getting compromised, attacked, or probed.

Nexpose

It helps identify vulnerabilities in systems, servers, and network devices. It scans for software versions, services, and open ports and then matches the information collected against the known vulnerabilities database.

REMnux

It is a leading malware analysis tool that helps security experts understand malware sample behaviour and the malware propagation method’s effect on the infected system.

Snort

It is a two-in-one Network Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and Network Intrusion Prevention System (IPS). It can effectively perform real-time traffic analysis and packet logging on Internet Protocol (IP) networks.

Logwatch

It is a log analysis tool that can analyze and review the log files from different systems and services. It helps in the identification of suspicious activities and security-related events.

Autopsy

It helps quickly investigate and analyze digital devices, USD drives, mobile devices, and complex drive data. It also helps easily identify and extract criminal activity evidence, such as artifacts left behind by malware and deleted files.

AWS Security Hub

It is the leading cloud security tool designed to help secure workloads on cloud environments. It facilitates the monitoring and protection of applications and infrastructure. It detects and responds to security incidents and can swiftly enforce security policies.

StackRox

It is the leading container security tool for securing containerized environments and applications. It can also detect and prevent container vulnerabilities, malware, and misconfiguration and offers constant security validation.

Carbon Black

It is another popular OSINT tool focused on offering an automated way to respond to security incidents. It can cover network intrusions, malware outbreaks, and other possible attacks. It helps identify the scope of an incident, contain it, eradicate it, and recover from it successfully.

Forcepoint DLP

It is a popular data leakage prevention tool designed to monitor, detect, and prevent sensitive data on the company’s network from being leaked to unauthorized parties. It uses different methods, such as machine learning, keywords, and DLP rules, to identify and protect sensitive data.

Bitglass

It is the Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), offering visibility and control over cloud application access and usage. It can detect and prevent misconfigurations, enforce security policies and compliance, and monitor user activity.

Swimlane

It is an advanced Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) tool. It offers automated ways to respond to security incidents on different security systems and tools. It helps automate repetitive tasks and workflows, fastens incident response, and improves security team communications.

LogRhythm

It is a dedicated Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tool designed to collect and analyze log data from different sources, such as applications, network devices, and servers. It helps identify security incidents and correlates event data from different sources to offer a comprehensive view of security-related activity.

Verodin Behavioral AI

The Behavioural Analytics tool detects and responds to threats by analyzing network user and device behaviours. It helps detect anomalies and suspicious activities and triggers automated incident response actions.

Authy

It is a Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) tool offering a dedicated authentication method for users to provide two or more forms of identification. It protects against account takeover and other attacks requiring data that the user knows or has.

OneLogin

It is an Identity and Access Management (IAM) tool designed to manage the identities and access of devices and users to different resources and applications. It helps enforce management credentials, track user activity, and enforce access controls.

Mimecast

It is an email security tool that protects against email-borne threats like ransomware, malware, phishing, and spam. It covers different features like DLP, email encryption, anti-malware filtering, and anti-spam filtering.

Prisma Cloud

It is the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tool that offers visibility into the security of a cloud-based environment. It helps organizations assess, track, and improve the security posture of cloud resources.

ForeScout

It is the Network Access Control (NAC) tool that prevents unauthorized devices from connecting to the network and helps secure network access. Some of ForeScout’s key responsibilities include providing secure access to authorized devices, detecting and blocking malicious devices, and enforcing policies.

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

Last but not least on our OSINT tools list is Kaspersky Endpoint Security. This tool protects the endpoints like servers, laptops, and desktops from possible threats, intrusions, and malware. It covers host-based intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, firewall, and antivirus.

10 Bonus OSINT Tools

Toutatis

It is a versatile data explorer that integrates 50+ open-source projects to empower easy cross-platform analysis, organization, and data gathering. It offers broad data support, such as social posts, media, or documents, and is fully customizable. It allows bulk data scaling, simplified content sharing, automated workflows, and a central data lakehouse.

IP Rover

It is an incognito IP investigator powered by cloud technology that conducts different searches to automatically find IP traits, network associations, and traffic origins. It conducts rigorous IP address searches, IP geolocation mapping, network surveillance, historical DNS data, and breached database searches. It offers enhanced threat intelligence, quick incident response, and superior surveillance.

Terra

It is an advanced intelligence analysis platform that leverages next-gen data automation, visualization, and consolidation to highlight critical threat patterns. It has a unified data lake, compliance guardrails, custom risk models, and mobile accessibility, along with automated workflows, collaborative analysis, and interactive visualizations.

Threat Connect

It is a popular Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) tool used for collecting, analyzing, and acting on threat intelligence from different sources. Hence, it facilitates easy identification, understanding, and responding to current and emerging threats.

Chef

Chef is a leading security automation and orchestration tool that is widespread for effectively automating repetitive and time-consuming security tasks. This OSINT tool covers compliance enforcement, incident response, and configuration management. Security teams use Chef to respond quickly to threats and improve security posture.

Cisco Umbrella

The DNS protection tool offers an additional security layer to the DNS infrastructure. It blocks malicious domains, prevents malware attacks, and prevents unauthorized communication between the command and control servers.

AirWatch

The mobile device management (MDM) tool focuses on managing, securing, and monitoring the different mobile devices accessing the organization’s resources. Hence, it helps businesses secure data, remotely wipe or lock a device if it’s stolen or lost, and enforce policies.

Ansible

It is the security configuration management tool for automating repetitive and time-consuming security tasks. This OSINT tool can effectively perform compliance enforcement, incident response, and configuration management. It helps security teams respond quickly to threats and swiftly improve the overall security posture.

FileZilla

It is a powerful secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) tool for securely transferring files over a network. It allows data encryption and authenticates the user before the entire file transfer takes place.

RSA NetWitness

It is a security analytics tool that offers real-time visibility into applications, systems, and network security. It helps in real-time detection, investigation, and response to security incidents.

Final Takeaways

So, no more labor-intensive searches to find the right OSINT tools for your quick information-gathering process. The quick list of the open-source intelligence tools mentioned above helps professionals find precise intelligence.

Our quick bonus list contains tips for making your intelligence-gathering process highly effective and accurate.

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