Investigators are often faced with an overwhelming amount of data. In these situations finding an exact person, time, or place among all the noise can be very difficult. This problem is not limited to geo- or chronolocation challenges like those published by Quiztime either. Fortunately this is not a new problem and there are tried …
The Process of Elimination – Quiztime Jan 14th 2022 Read More »
Sometimes the way to solve a geolocation challenge is obvious. Other times less so. The Quiztime challenge that Fiete Stegers set on 8th October was certainly in the latter category and was probably the hardest Quiztime I’ve attempted so far. This is quite a lengthy write-up, so click to skip ahead to sections of interest. …
Why are all these people parking their cars at a swimming pool in the middle of lockdown? This was the question Lars Wienand posted for yesterday’s Quiztime challenge. Here’s the photo: To solve this quiz we need to do two things. First we need to know where this is, and secondly we need to know …
Ever since I started blogging about image geolocation I’ve tried to write about methods and techniques that make solving these kind of puzzles more structured and systematic. In my professional career I was (until recently) a criminal investigator so it was helpful for me to transfer habits and methodologies from traditional investigation to the subject …
Extract, Research, Verify: Quiztime 6th October 2020. Read More »
The term “OSINT” sometimes gets thrown around a little too loosely. The “open source” part of OSINT is straightfoward enough: there’s a world of information out there and with enough digging and practice you can find almost anything you could ever think of – but by itself this is not OSINT. The “intelligence” part of …
Website OSINT: What’s The Link Between Antifa.com and Russia? Read More »
This article was written jointly with Matthias Wilson (@MWOSINT). It is also published on his own site here. IP addresses feature prominently in digital investigations, but how useful are they for geolocation? The truth is that while IP addresses have many investigative uses, they can be quite unreliable as a precise geolocation method. The limitations …
During lockdown I’ve spent a lot of my evenings trying to improve my coding and data science skills with Datacamp. As I’ve tried to apply my new found knowledge to real world projects I’ve come to learn that about 80% of working with data is cleaning it up and making it tidy before you can …
Hunchly is an excellent OSINT tool designed to capture and record your browser activity as you go. Once activated it sits quietly in the background as you browse and saves copies of webpages as you view them. It also records searches, captures EXIF data from images, takes screenshots, and saves lots of other useful data …
I started writing up this Quiztime post almost two months ago but then life got very busy and I never managed to finish it. This was a really fun quiz by Lars Wienand and the solution was not as obvious as I first thought it was so a little extra digging was required. Here’s the …
Lost In The Woods & Translation Troubles – Quiztime 10th March 2020 Read More »
Not all image-based OSINT work is about geolocation. It is always helpful to know where a photo was taken, but knowing when an image was taken can be just as important when trying to verify it. Is this a COVID-hit Italian hospital, or the aftermath of an earthquake in Croatia? Are these food packages left …