In Malaysia even ASEAN, there is no one to compile resources locally like in Canada, South Africa, Australia, and Poland. Even researchers from other countries compiled resources about major players in countries like China and Ukraine. So, why don’t we make our own then? After weeks of cleaning up the scrape output, here is the OSINT in Malaysia resources list:
The walkthrough of the sections in the resource list
News
As per standard, it is vital to get a local perspective on the incident when researching a country. This compilation of trusted news sources will help to get that.
Malaysian OSINT Twitter account
In Malaysia, OSINT is in its infancy stage so there is not an established Malaysian-based OSINT organization/body. With that in mind, this guide will point to the 2 at the forefront of the Malaysian OSINT scene on Twitter, and GeoInt.MY(@GeoInt_MY) and CG(@Radz1112). GeoInt.MY account focuses more on the Geospatial intelligence side where the account traces exactly the location of a viral situation picked by the account. CG on semi-hiatus on the other hand is the more famous out of the two as he has become a whistleblower for an OSINT tool that scrapes IC card numbers.
Check both of them out if interested in Malaysian-specific OSINT content.
Open Dataset
This is a compilation of data in multiple fields that the government compiled together, great if there’s a need to make infographics for Malaysian-based stuff
Traffic Info
This section focuses more on the real time traffic in Malaysia especially around Kuala Lumpur/Klang Valley. The first resource that linked in this section is the Astro Radio Traffic twitter as they give updates on Klang Valley. Klang Valley in simple terms is a big mix of states between Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya, here is the Wikipedia link for better explanation(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klang_Valley).
The second link is Jalanow.com. This link shows real time road footages on 4 road sections in Malaysia: KL-Putrajaya, Highways, Penang Bridge and Johor-Singapore.
Geographic Landmark
This section is originally the focus of this guide but after scouring through the net for Malaysian-based traffic-based landmarks, the Wikipedia articles that cover the topic of the Malaysian road sign, Registration plates, and States are concise enough for research purposes.
One very specific language marker specific to southeast Asia that is not properly documented online is the Jawi script. Jawi script is a script that old Malays used for writing before the arrival of colonization in the region. Jawi is read right to left similar to the Arabic language. This is a very Malay-specific feature. The Malay race is available in Malaysia, Southern Thailand, Brunei, Singapore, and Indonesia.
If you ever come across a road sign like Figure 1.1, the Latin writing above is the same as the Jawi script.
If you come across Figure 1.2, the process of understanding the Jawi script is doable in this context, but it will take some effort to decode every letter with the sound to understand the script. Keep in mind that the Jawi script is read from right to left. This (https://omniglot.com/writing/malay.htm) and the Jawi alphabet Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawi alphabet) are two sites that are recommended to help with this process.
Staff Directory
This might be the highlight of this resource list. On the company’s website, there is a directory that shows the staff details in the organization. This is important as they often contain important details like email, pictures, and position within the company. These detail can be crucial for investigators.
So, there are processes for gathering the resources in this section. First, compile them together here for Malaysian-based companies and ministries by using this(https://github.com/tasos-py/Search-Engines-Scraper) to scrape the google search. After that, clean up the result, delete any non-related links that were accidentally scraped together and insert all left in this list.
That’s all for this Malaysian OSINT resources list guide.
This guide is intended as a starting point for the Malaysian OSINT community to start compiling available resources on the web with Malaysian-specific resources so with that in mind if there is any interest to add/editing these resources, please inform via Twitter @thisisfinx
Thank you for reading.
