Open-source Intelligence

Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is a central element of most corruption and money laundering investigations. The information and evidence you can gather from publicly available sources can make the difference between a successful investigation and a dead end. Through a simulated investigation, this course will help you learn the basics of how to prepare, conduct and report an OSINT undertaking.

• Introduction to OSINT and the intelligence cycle;
• Preparing your research environment;
• Searching the open web and deep web databases;
• Analysing domain records to find information about websites;
• Using cached and archived records to retrieve past versions of websites;
• Gathering information from social media sites;
• Exploiting the visual and meta information of images;
• Searching online communities, investigating dark web pages and bitcoin;
• Preparing a report of an OSINT investigation.

During the course you immerse yourself in a simulated investigation into the fishing vessel FV Malaga and its owner, the organisation Mossaman Commodities. You follow open-source leads about the misuse of company structures that reveal indicators of illegal fishing and the smuggling of endangered animal parts.

The course was developed by our eLearning team in collaboration with subject matter experts from ICAR and our Green Corruption programme, with primary funding from PMI Impact. Languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Latvian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian, Ukrainian.