Field Guides
Practical write-ups on OSINT, digital forensics and CTF technique. Everything here is free to read, no account needed — though the challenges are more fun.
How to Solve CTF Challenges: A Working Methodology
The repeatable five-step loop experienced players run: read the brief properly, inventory your artifacts, cheap checks first, pivot with purpose, and get unstuck on purpose. Plus the beginner mistakes that burn the most time.
OSINT Basics: How Open-Source Investigations Work
What OSINT is (and isn't), how investigators pivot between identifiers, the tools that actually earn their place in 2026, and the OPSEC and ethics rules that keep an investigation clean.
Google Dorking: Search Operators for OSINT
Every search operator that still works, the ones that quietly died (looking at you, cache:), a reusable domain-recon workflow, and a plain answer to "is this legal?"
EXIF Metadata and Photo Geolocation
Read EXIF with ExifTool, turn GPS coordinates into a map pin, learn which platforms strip metadata before it reaches you, and geolocate photos visually when the metadata is already gone.
Finished the guides? The Intel Vault goes deeper with published investigation articles — and the challenges let you practice all of it against synthetic cases.