Cybersecurity OSINT
Using search APIs as one input in open-source intelligence and threat research.
The problem
Threat researchers need to find leaked credentials mentions, exposed infrastructure, phishing domains impersonating a brand, and chatter about emerging vulnerabilities — all of which show up scattered across forums, paste sites, and security blogs faster than any single commercial threat-intel feed catches up.
How the workflow is built
Search queries target CVE identifiers, brand names combined with phishing-indicative terms, and known threat-actor aliases, often layered with domain and file-type filters (`filetype:`, `site:` on known paste or forum domains) to narrow toward the kind of exposure being hunted. This runs as one input feeding a broader OSINT pipeline alongside dedicated threat-intel and dark-web monitoring tools, not as a replacement for them.
Example queries
"[company domain]" phishing kit OR credential dump"CVE-2026-XXXX" exploit proof of conceptsite:pastebin.com "[company name]" leaked
Pitfalls to watch for
- Most of the highest-value OSINT sources (closed forums, some paste sites, dark-web markets) simply aren't indexed by mainstream search engines, so a search-API-only approach will systematically miss the most sensitive exposures.
- Query terms in this space overlap heavily with terms attackers themselves search for, so query logging and access controls on the tooling matter more here than in a typical marketing or research use case.
- False positives are common — a brand name appearing near a security-flavored term doesn't mean an actual incident, and unverified hits need a human or a second-source confirmation before triggering any response workflow.