From the Public Archive to the Wayback Machine: Thinking Like a Historian for OSINT Practitioners 

Arguing that “thinking like a historian” will benefit OSINT newcomers and veterans alike, this presentation examines the relationship between academic historical research methods and OSINT investigative techniques. In each of the four subsections, I establish key features shared by OSINT research and the research performed in the humanities and social sciences. I then detail practical and methodological lessons for OSINT practitioners going forward. First, I discuss two practical takeaways from historical research: I highlight underutilized resources and digital archives that can be useful for OSINT researchers, and I argue for the importance of building our own research archives by saving and indexing our sources. Second, I discuss methodological lessons from historical research. I argue for the need to think critically about how archives and the sources within them shape our findings, and that interpreting our sources requires time and effort, as well as flexible, analytical thinking. We need to interrogate both what is being said and what is not being said, and to be ready to read sources “against the grain.” I conclude with lessons from the academic discipline for the ways that we, as OSINT researchers, document, support, frame, and articulate our findings for our chosen audiences.
SANS Open-Source Intelligence Summit 2024
From the Public Archive to the Wayback Machine: Thinking Like a Historian for OSINT Practitioners
Stephen Silver, Senior Investigator, Brown Rudnick
View upcoming Summits: www.sans.org/u/DuS