OSINT Exposure Audit
Digital dumpster diving — systematically cataloguing what an organization leaks publicly that enables attacks. Everything an adversary can learn without ever sending a packet to your infrastructure.
When to Use
- External attack surface assessment
- Pre-pentest reconnaissance review
- Data leakage auditing
- Breach impact assessment
- Supply chain exposure analysis
- Merger/acquisition security due diligence
- Continuous monitoring of organizational exposure drift
Exposure Taxonomy
Code Repositories
- Leaked secrets in git history (keys, tokens, passwords in old commits)
.envfiles,docker-compose.ymlwith credentials committed to public repos- API keys and service account credentials in source
- Internal URLs, hostnames, and IP ranges in IaC (Terraform, CloudFormation)
- CI/CD pipeline configs exposing infrastructure details
Document Metadata
- Author names and usernames in PDF/Office document properties
- Software versions (Adobe, Office builds) revealing patch levels
- Internal file paths (
C:\Users\jsmith\Documents\...) in document metadata - EXIF data in images: GPS coordinates, device info, timestamps
- Printer/scanner metadata in published documents
DNS and Infrastructure
- Subdomain enumeration via brute-force, zone transfers, passive DNS
- Certificate transparency logs revealing internal service names
- Historical DNS records exposing migrations and old infrastructure
- Cloud storage buckets (S3, GCS, Azure Blob) with predictable names
- ASN mapping to identify full IP space ownership
- Reverse DNS revealing naming conventions
Credential Exposure
- Breach database correlation (email domains in known breaches)
- Paste sites (Pastebin, GitHub Gists) containing credentials
- Credential stuffing lists with organization email addresses
- Leaked password patterns revealing policy (length, complexity, rotation)
- Exposed
.htpasswd,web.config, or similar auth files
Social Media Intelligence
- Employee names, roles, reporting structure from LinkedIn
- Technology stack hints from employee profiles and endorsements
- Org chart reconstruction from public profiles
- Job postings revealing specific technologies, versions, and vendors
- Conference talks and slides disclosing architecture details
- Geolocation of facilities from employee posts
Web Archives
- Wayback Machine snapshots of removed pages, old API documentation
- Deprecated endpoints still responding in production
- Removed job postings revealing past security concerns
- Old sitemaps and
robots.txtexposing hidden paths - Cached versions of pages taken down after incidents
Supply Chain
- Third-party vendor exposure (shared credentials, connected services)
- Dependency confusion potential in public package registries
- Internal package names leaked in
package.json,requirements.txt - Vendor security posture reflecting on the organization
- Open-source contributions revealing internal tooling
Audit Methodology
Phase 1: Passive Reconnaissance
- Domain and infrastructure enumeration (subdomains, IPs, ASNs, cloud resources)
- Certificate transparency log analysis for all owned domains
- Passive DNS collection and historical record review
- Search engine dorking for exposed files and directories
Phase 2: Code and Document Analysis
- Git repository scanning — secrets in full commit history
- Exposed
.gitdirectory detection on web-facing servers - Document metadata extraction from all public-facing files (PDFs, DOCX, XLSX)
- Source map and debug artifact discovery
Phase 3: Credential and Identity Exposure
- Credential breach correlation (HaveIBeenPwned, breach compilations)
- Paste site monitoring for organization-related dumps
- Email address harvesting and employee enumeration
Phase 4: Active Surface Mapping
- Cloud storage discovery and permission testing
- Job posting and social media intelligence gathering
- Web archive analysis for leaked or removed content
- Third-party service enumeration (SaaS, APIs, webhooks)
Tool Reference
| Category | Tools |
|---------------|-------------------------------------------------------------|
| Infrastructure | amass, subfinder, dnsx, httpx, nuclei, Shodan, Censys |
| Git/Code | truffleHog, gitleaks, git-secrets, GitHub/GitLab search dorks |
| Documents | exiftool, FOCA, metagoofil |
| Credentials | h8mail, Dehashed API, PWNDB |
| Web | gau (getallurls), waybackurls, katana |
| Cloud | cloud_enum, S3Scanner, GCPBucketBrute |
| OSINT Frameworks | spiderfoot, recon-ng, theHarvester |
Code Review Patterns
What leaks from codebases — check for these in any public repository:
- Hardcoded credentials: API keys, tokens, passwords in source files
- Internal hostnames/IPs: configuration files referencing
10.x.x.x,*.internal - Sensitive comments:
TODO: remove password,HACK: using admin creds - Debug endpoints:
/debug,/actuator,/elmah.axdleft enabled in production - Verbose error messages: stack traces exposing file paths, library versions
- Exposed
.gitdirectory: full repository history accessible via web server - Source maps in production:
.js.mapfiles reconstructing original source - Environment detection logic: code revealing staging/prod URL patterns
- Dependency manifests:
package-lock.json,Pipfile.lockpinning vulnerable versions
Output Format
Structure findings as follows:
## Finding: [Title]
- **Exposure Type**: Code Repository | Document Metadata | Infrastructure | Credential | Social Media | Web Archive | Supply Chain
- **Source**: Where the exposure was discovered (URL, repo, document name)
- **Data Exposed**: Specific sensitive data found
- **Risk Level**: Critical | High | Medium | Low | Informational
- **Attack Scenario**: How an adversary would leverage this exposure
- **Remediation**:
- Immediate: Rotate credential / Remove document / Revoke access
- Preventive: Configure access control / Implement secret scanning / Deploy metadata scrubbing
- **Evidence**: Screenshot, hash, or sanitized excerpt (never include raw credentials in reports)
Aggregate findings into an exposure heat map by category to identify systemic issues versus one-off leaks.
Related Skills
social-engineering-audit— leveraging OSINT findings for social engineering assessmentsentry-point-analyzer— mapping exposed services into exploitable attack pathsstatic-security-analyzer— deep code review for vulnerabilities beyond leaked secretswebapp-testing— active testing of discovered web applications and APIs