January 11, 2017
In September 2015, Alexey Kovalev of Noodle Remover wrote an article in Russian regarding the popularity of RT, in response to a Daily Beast article and the subsequent reaction of RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan. In light of the recent United States Intelligence Community report on Russian influence regarding the 2016 presidential election, we have translated a section…
January 9, 2017
This article will be updated during the length of the Mosul operation. Last update: January 10, 2017. Mosul was captured by so-called Islamic State (IS) militants in June 2014. More than two years later, on October 16, 2016, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the start of the operation to recapture the Iraqi city, dubbed…
January 4, 2017
By Nick Waters
On the 23rd of December, the water supply to Damascus was cut off by the Damascus Water Authority after it was alleged to have been contaminated with diesel. This has resulted in over four million people having no regular access to water, and the UN releasing a statement declaring its alarm. There are competing claims as…
December 22, 2016
This article was written collaboratively with additional participation of Bellingcat contributors Timmi Allen and Aric Toler. On December 21st, Bellingcat found several Facebook profiles of Anis Amri, the main suspect in the killing of 12 and wounding of 49 people in the December 19th Berlin Christmas market on Breidscheitplatz. The fingerprints and documents of 24-year-old…
December 21, 2016
By Sean Case
Download full report Скачать полную версию доклада Click here for a one-minute introductory map tour that gives the main findings and context of this report. The below text is an extract from the full report. The interactive data map underlying all of the findings discussed can be found here. Summary Terms such as civil war…
December 19, 2016
Warning: this report contains sensitive images. This article was written collaboratively with Bellingcat contributor Hady Al-Khatib, with additional contributions from Eliot Higgins. Before the Syrian city of Aleppo was almost fully recaptured by Syrian government troops and aligned forces, the opposition-held part of the city witnessed one of the highest number of alleged chemical weapon…
December 14, 2016
By Nick Waters
This article was written collaboratively with Bellingcat contributor Timmi Allen. Bana Alabed is a 7 year-old girl who lives in East Aleppo. Through her broken English and simple messages alternating between fear and hope, she has become a representation of the suffering that children face every day within Syria. She is also a star on Twitter….
December 14, 2016
Monitoring activities at makeshift oil sites in Syria’s Deir Ez-Zor Governorate through satellite imagery suggests there has been a sharp decrease in production activity in the last half of 2016. There could be various reasons for the drop in oil refining, which could have implications for any future strategy of the Islamic State to gain …
December 8, 2016
On October 31, 2016, the Turkish daily newspaper Yeni Şafak reported that Turkey and Russia signed a “landmark agreement” in northern Syria, ostensibly partitioning portions of the provinces of Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Raqqa, Al-Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor to a Turkish-backed assembly of “local elements” and FSA-aligned brigades. This report is unconfirmed by independent sources –…
December 1, 2016
ISIS have successfully adopted a little known Al-Qa’eda / Al-Nusra tactic known as Inghimasi. In a switch from the suicide bombing terrorism of the 2000’s, Inghimasiyun deliberately aim to stay alive, killing their enemies with firearms before having the option to detonate their vests when overwhelmed Evidence the tactic has been exported to North Africa…
December 6, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally posted at the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. Not long ago I was intrigued by the Oct282011.com Internet mystery (if you haven’t heard of it check out this podcast). Friends of the Hunchly mailing list and myself embarked on a brief journey to see if we could root out any additional clues or, of…
November 30, 2016
The work of open source investigators frequently involves using content shared on social media. The reliability of those sources is something that is always under question, not only by the investigators themselves, but also by those who would try to discredit that type of content as being unreliable. A good open source investigation would not…
November 12, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally posted on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. Welcome back to the fourth and final instalment in this series. If you haven’t read part one, two or three definitely feel free to go and do so. This will be much shorter than the others The original inspiration for this post was from a @krypti3a blog…
September 5, 2016
By Aric Toler
When most people think about open source research, they think about uncovering social media materials of soldiers on the front-lines of the wars in Ukraine and Syria, or geolocating video footage of significant events with Google Earth. While open source materials have led a mini-revolution in how conflicts are reported online, there is another area where there…
September 1, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally published on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. Welcome back! In this series of blog posts we are wrapping the awesome OnionScan tool and then analyzing the data that falls out of it. If you haven’t read parts one and two in this series then you should go do that first. In this post we…
August 11, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This entry was originally posted on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. Welcome back good Python soldiers. In Part One of this series we created a wrapper around OnionScan, a fantastic tool created by Sarah Jamie Lewis (@sarajamielewis). If you haven’t read Part One then go do so now. Now that you have a bunch of data (or you…
July 28, 2016
By Justin Seitz
You may have heard of this awesome tool called OnionScan that is used to scan hidden services in the dark web looking for potential data leaks. Recently the project released some cool visualizations and a high level description of what their scanning results looked like. What they didn’t provide is how to actually go about…
July 14, 2016
“Even a regimented press will again and again betray their nation’s interests to a painstaking observer”. William Donovan (OSS Director) “Today you are the media, it is your duty to report and keep the hope alive! You are the media, we are one!” Mir Hossein Mousavi (former Iranian Prime Minister) Upstate New York, 1883 is…
June 2, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally posted on the Hunchly blog on Medium. This story starts with Sidney Crosby. A professional hockey player and Canadian icon. I can neither confirm nor deny that I welled up like a small child at the Hockey Hall of Fame’s “Golden Goal” display (I will never forget that moment). So imagine…
June 1, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally published on AutomatingOSINT.com. In the first part of this series we covered how to extract email accounts from SQLite databases and pull additional information from FullContact.com to find social media accounts or other online profiles that are associated with those email addresses. In this post we will apply much the same technique except…