Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by red-iron-pine 737 days ago
it is not a weird term, and is absolutely a thing. a big deal in 2024, really.

back in the day it was just "reading the newspapers and talking to the local cab drivers", but on 2024 you're scanning forums and social media, on top of news sites.

go to a military-related subreddit and start asking questions about stuff, and you'll eventually get an expert to chime in. Make wrong & stupid claims and then have them slap you down and spill some details -- that's how they got dudes to release classified tank info in Warthunder.

dudes in Palestine and in Ukraine are getting killed because they post selfies and tweets that have GPS coordinates in the metadata. Not hidden behind any top secret firewall, easy to find if you're checking VK or Instagram, but very real implications for dropping bombs.

OSINT is also absolutely a thing in Cyber, where you can get a lot of details about a target by reading their press releases -- "Corp X signs big new deal with Oracle" -- which can give you a new attack surface. Phishing, on a long, broad timeline, has a very high success rate, so go onto Linkedin and start connecting to people. Figure out their tech stack, create a Sales Guy account, and start reaching out to Architects and Managers, and then map out the teams that might have elevated access...

1 comments

> OSINT is also absolutely a thing in Cyber

First time I see "cyber" used as a noun. Is that short for "cyberspace", i.e. the internet, or is it something else?

the military uses it to describe all things relating to the internet, the rest of us used to use it to mean cybersex, which why you mostly only ever hear it from military folks and c-suite type people now and the rest of us kinda chuckle under our breath every time they mention it.
Five-sided thought is a hell of a drug, are you _sure_ you want to know?
Cybersecurity i think.