Open source intelligence (OSINT) as Support of Cybersecurity Operations: Use of OSINT in a Colombian Context and Sentiment Analysis

Abstract

Open source intelligence (OSINT) is a cyber-intelli-gence branch used to obtain and analyze information related to potential adversaries, so it can support risk assessments and help to prevent damages against cri-tical assets. This paper presents a research about diffe-rent OSINT technologies and how these can be used to perform cyber intelligence tasks of a nation. A set of transforms addressed to the Colombian context are pre-sented, which were implemented and contributed to the community allowing to the law enforcement agencies to develop information gathering process from Colombian open sources. However, the real use of the information is given by the implementation of three machine learning models used to perform sentiment analysis over this in-formation, in order to know the opinion of the adversary about certain topic and understand his motivation and, in this way, define proper cyber defense strategies. Fina-lly, some challenges related to the application of OSINT techniques are identified and described regarding its use by state security agencies