The Four Major OSINT Impacts on 2022

OSINT Role in the War in Ukraine (Intelligence)

The war in Ukraine this year turned out to be?the most advanced warfare ?in human history. We could also observe the massive Open-Source Data Intelligence contributions made by the Five Eyes (FVEY ) to Ukraine's defense forces capabilities during the year. The major OSINT applications have been:

- eliminating through the fog of war (leveraged by?Palantir's and Starlink's core systems ), disclosing the enemy's positions, movements and?intentions .

- insight jobs (e.g., studying social media profiles of combatants, further catfishing for insight info, or extracting that info from catfished assets like photos).

- counterintelligence within Ukraine territory (deep digital traces analysis for people to identify their hidden connections and influence).

- recon within Russian territory (the tide of I.T. refugees triggered waves of data leaks from major Russian companies Yandex, Delivery Club, Sberbank, Ozon, Citymobil, DNS Rabota, VkusVill, etc.).

- sanction evasion schemes fighting (e.g., tracing the beneficiaries of companies, organizations, and people, as well as tracing crypto-currency transactions beneficiaries).

- propaganda and fake news fighting (e.g., using sentimental analysis of massive SMM activities in dynamics to identify the abnormal invasions to shift the?Overtone window ).

OSINT Role in Cryptocurrency Forensics (Anti-Money Laundering)

It is a well-known fact among investigators and threat intelligence specialists that cryptocurrency and blockchain transactions are traceable. Blockchain technology's core is transactions recorded on a public, distributed ledger, which makes all transactions open to the public - and any interested government agency. The good thing is that most of the bad actors' decision-makers lack tech-savvy skills.?

That led to the fraud?exposure and bankruptcy ?of FTX Trading Ltd., commonly known as FTX (short for "Futures Exchange") this fall - one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges and crypto hedge funds.

As well as to?sanctioning ?Ethereum mixer Tornado Cash by the U.S. Treasury Department. That is one of the most high-profile cases of the year because Tornado Cash was one of the most extensive privacy-focused Ethereum mixing services that helped users obfuscate transactions.?

Another year's win belongs to the U.S. Department of Justice. Leveraging the full crypto-tracing potential of the OSINT, the U.S. DoJ managed to win a?high-stakes extradition fight ?with Russia for Alexander Vinnik (BTC-e exchange operator). The Illicit Bitcoin exchange is alleged to have received deposits valued at over $4B for money laundering.?

As I mentioned, most of the bad actor's decision makers are not tech/OSINT-savvy, so another important event of the year - Iran adopts cryptocurrency. Several?media reported?that Iran has?officially approved?using cryptocurrency nationally to circumvent U.S. sanctions. Moreover, Iran made its first $10 million import cryptocurrency order last fall as a test run. That channel might allow the country to trade through digital assets that bypass the U.S. dollar global financial system and to trade with other embargoed countries (e.g., Russia or North Korea).??

OSINT Role in Criminal Forensics (Public Safety)

Traditionally, open-source data intelligence provides Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) access to the DarkNet's historical data with all its illegal posts, threads, and emails deanonymized by PGP.

That way, one of the most significant OSINT-based Police operations of the year is attributed to the German Police that shut down Hydra Marketplace. The servers of Hydra Market, the most prominent Russian darknet platform for selling drugs and money laundering,?have been seized ?by the Central Office for Combating Cybercrime?(ZIT) and?Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). The police were also able to seize 543 bitcoins from the profits of Hydra, which are currently worth a little over $25 million. The confiscated money indicates the size of the Hydra market, which counted around 19,000 registered seller accounts serving at least 17 million customers worldwide. For the Police?

Another essential, OSINT-powered LEA operation of the year is the anti-human trafficking one, conducted by the San Diego division of the FBI. The agents rescued at least 17 potential victims as part of an?extensive nationwide operation .

It is also worth mentioning the surge of U.S. Law Enforcement interest in OSINT-tools and specialists this year. It has been growing along with the methodology and software development and could be easily traced by the rise of government RFEs, bids, and awards that appeared past year at federal, state, county, and city levels (e.g., the recent OSINT Aggregator and Processing Platform bid by?Miami Beach Police Department ).?

Police investigators and digital forensics professionals working on behalf of law enforcement usually utilize OSINT software for such tasks as background checks, risk assessments, gang/group investigations, web investigations, undercover jobs, and counter-terrorism.?

Just keep in mind that if the press does not post about such operations, then LEAs did their jobs well, preventing the mess from happening.

OSINT Role in the U.S. National Defense (Defense)

This year put cybersecurity, threat intelligence, and open-source data intelligence at the center of national interests and federal budgets for coming years.??

As could be checked by the official budgets and visions published, it looks like everybody understands the importance, and everybody has reserved a budget for a piece of OSINT for themselves: the U.S.?FTC ,?DoD ,?DoS , OSAC,?DHS , ICE,?OFAC , e.t.c.

As the market of OSINT-software is still shaping, most software vendors and providers will be happy to deliver to satisfy the tide of demand.?

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Thank you for reading, and let's stay tuned for the next year, shall we?

Wish you happy holidays and New Year, guys!