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…
Tag: Techniques
The Secret Life Of JPEGs
Using photographs for OSINT purposes is not new but almost all work of this kind mostly focuses on the visual content of images. Much less well known is the usefulness of image meta- and file data for research purposes. Beyond…
Using Gap Analysis For Smarter OSINT – Quiztime 4th March 2020
In OSINT we make use of the wealth of information that is now available to us, but so often it becomes the case that there is too much information for us to process effectively. It’s easy to drown in a…
Who Stole My Stuff? Finding Out Who Is Behind A Website
The last blog post I wrote about Fake Twitter profiles is by far the most widely-read post I’ve ever published since I started this blog. It’s nice when people read your work but there was a little sour note with…
Signs You’re Following A Fake Twitter Account…
The challenge of dealing with fake accounts that spread disinformation is probably one of the greatest challenges facing the large social media companies. Most methods used to detect fake Twitter accounts (like the excellent Botometer) assume that they are working…
Seeking Sector035 – Quiztime 30th January 2020
January has been a busy month both personally and professionally so I haven’t been able to take part in as many Quiztime challenges as I’d like to. Fortunately I had time to try Sector035’s Thursday Quiz. Sector035 posted not one…
Website Forensics: How To Detect Editorial Changes
A few months ago I wrote about how you could use Carbon-14 to detect the timestamps for images published in webpages. By comparing the publication times of the images with the publication time of the page itself it is possible…
OSINT Techniques: Who’s Behind A WordPress Site?
WordPress is the base that 35% of the world’s websites are built on. If you’re ever going to investigate a website, then it’s really important to be able to know your way around a WordPress setup. In this tutorial I’m…
20 Questions – Quiztime 25th November 2019
How much information is there in a photograph? There is always more than you think. I learned recently that when miltary intelligence officers receive their training, they are given a photo that does not seem to contain much detail but…
Crypto Scam Investigation: Using Spiderfoot HX For OSINT Automation
Automation or Augmentation? Automation is an increasingly important part of OSINT. Even the simplest of investigations can require large amounts of different data types to be gathered and analysed quickly. Yet it is not accurate to suggest that all…