May 13, 2016
As South Korea readies to boost naval diplomacy in the region by hosting Pacific Reach 2016, new satellite imagery of the recently inaugurated Jeju island naval base was made available in Google Earth. The recent space snapshots acquired in March show several completed site improvements including new administrative and support buildings, athletic fields, roads, an extensive peninsular…
May 12, 2016
By Bellingcat
3 мая 2016 года на YouTube было загружено новое видео, на котором, по-видимому, запечатлена колонна, перевозившая «Бук» по территории востока Украины, контролируемой сепаратистами, 17 июля 2014 года. 11 мая это видео обнаружили пользователи Твиттера @amishjihadi и @loondale. На видео видны несколько деталей, указывающих, что это та же СОУ (самоходная огневая установка), которую засняли перемещающейся к…
May 12, 2016
By Bellingcat
On May 3rd 2016, a new video of what appears to be the July 17th 2014 Buk convoy was uploaded to YouTube, and was on May 11th discovered by Twitter users @amishjihadi and @loondale. In the video, there are several details visible which seem to indicate this is the same Buk TELAR that has been…
May 11, 2016
By Oryx
Just six days after the release of the now infamous footage showing fighters of the Islamic State fighting, failing and getting killed while storming Peshmerga positions North of Mosul, the Islamic State made another attempt at taking Peshmerga positions on the 3rd of May 2016 near the Assyrian town of Tesqopa (or Telskuf, Tel Eskof,…
May 10, 2016
Syria is a hotbed of weapons proliferation. While a variety of weapon systems have been proliferated in Syria, MANPADS proliferation in particular is a significant concern for the international community. These systems are user-friendly, easy to transport and capable of taking down civilian aircraft. It’s clear the presence of MANPADS in unstable countries like Syria weakens international security. By far, the…
May 9, 2016
The latest commercial satellite imagery available in Google Earth shows some new developments at Vietnam’s Cam Ranh (Nha Trang) Airport (CXR). In March, the north eastern support area appeared complete and new aircraft environmental shelters were erected on the parking apron. The southwest support area still showed construction activity at several new support and administrative…
May 9, 2016
Авторы: Брендан Клиффорд* и Кристиан Триберт** Война в Йемене принесла населению немало страданий, в том числе обострила дефицит воды, который уже давно является серьезной проблемой в этой стране. Уже почти целый год объекты водного хозяйства Йемена подвергаются целенаправленным ударам. Мы провели расследование с использованием открытых источников информации, предметом которого стал последний обстрел (предположительно произошедший 8…
May 8, 2016
The latest imagery update available in Google Earth shows some new developments at Vietnam’s deep-water port of Cam Ranh Bay. For starters, we get a clear view of the new international port facility that was inaugurated back in March. Space snapshots acquired by DigitalGlobe show extensive berthing areas including a 640 meter finger pier and…
May 7, 2016
India bolstered its air assets deployed to the Andaman and Nicobar island chain in 2015, recently obtained commercial satellite imagery confirms. With Chinese conventional and nuclear submarines expanding patrols near the subcontinent—a common headline since 2009—India has stepped up the deployment of manned and unmanned assets to India’s strategic outpost in the Bay of Bengal,…
May 6, 2016
Несколько месяцев назад я опубликовал статью об авторизации через SMS-сообщения, которую написал после атаки на Telegram в Иране. Недавно поступили сведения о новых попытках взломать учетные записи пользователей этого сервиса в Иране и в России. Олег Козловский – оппозиционный активист и директор фонда «Образ будущего» (Москва). Он написал в Facebook пост о том, как был взломан его аккаунт Telegram. В пятницу,…
May 13, 2016
The Syrian Archive maintains an extensive video database of all known allegations in which civilians have been reported killed or injured by Russia since September 30th 2015. This is one of the datasets that the Syrian Archive has collected, and we will continue working on collecting and creating other video datasets of violations by all…
May 3, 2016
By Nick Waters
On the 25 February 2016 a video (Video 1) was posted in the video site “Liveleak.com” titled “Shelling of Checkpoint in Ukraine” with the description “Reports suggest the pro-Russian separatists fired on the Police checkpoint in Yasinovataya, Ukraine”. It is just one video amongst the huge amount of information produced and posted on the internet…
May 2, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally published on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. I will be the first to tell you that I know little about forensics compared to most law enforcement or private forensic examiners. One thing that I always found amazing was looking at the result of a forensic acquisition and seeing all of that magical data flowing…
April 22, 2016
By Bellingcat
Last week we published correspondence between Bellingcat and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which we requested evidence to support their allegations of Bellingcat and others faking MH17 evidence. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has replied, and their full reply (translated from Russian) with their evidence of fakery is shown below, followed by…
April 14, 2016
By Bellingcat
On April 6th 2016 Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova made the following statement about Bellingcat: Bellingcat as an instrument to divert attention from investigating the tragedy of the Malaysian Boeing over Ukraine We took note of an interview with Bellingcat representatives for the BBC in which they sarcastically spoke about some “trolling” on the part of…
April 12, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally published on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. In a previous blog post I covered how to utilize the YouTube API to find the preview images for videos and then reverse search them using the TinEye API. In this blog post we will cover how to use the same techniques for Vimeo to retrieve…
March 29, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally published on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. It is always an interesting question and one that was posed over on the IntelTechniques.com forums. How can you tell what hour of the day people are most active on Facebook? There are tools out there for Twitter and other platforms, but due to Facebook’s limited…
March 1, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This post was originally published on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. In the first part of this series we examined how to write some code that can slice and dice and image and then submit it to Imagga. By examining the tags that come back we can make a fairly accurate guess as to whether there is…
February 3, 2016
In December 2015 Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both published reports that included claims that Russia had used cluster munitions in its air campaign in Syria. The Russian Defence Ministry responded to those accusations by denying Russia had them at their airbase in Syria: Concerning the suppositions on cluster bombs. Russian aviation does not…
January 22, 2016
For new and ongoing conflicts across the world, the need to document their impact on civilians and the environment upon which they depend is encouraging the development of new research tools and methodologies. Traditional approaches for monitoring environmental risks are notoriously reliant on field access for experts. But with civilians increasingly able to access…