Kind: captions
Language: en
hi everyone
and welcome to this series on how to do
open source investigations from home
my name is ben and i'm really excited to
share these videos with you this is part
one
so let's get started
through these videos i'm going to share
tips and tricks in open source
intelligence
investigations and just good old plain
research so that no matter who you are
or where you are in the world
you can do any of this from home with
publicly available information
to answer those important questions such
as who what where
and when i like to focus on using
practical case studies
so you'll see plenty like this one where
we take a video
create a panorama out of stills in the
video and use that to identify exactly
where that video was filmed using
satellite imagery
so let's get into the first session
which is about starting research with
the image reverse search
and identifying possible dating scammers
often time research online starts with a
simple photo
or a video and we always have those
questions in our mind when we see this
photo or video
about what what might be happening in
this photo or where might have
been or when was it even taken or who
is taking it and who is in it or who is
responsible
these sorts of questions are really
start are really difficult to start to
answer when we just have a photo
perhaps we could do a little bit of
imagery analysis and try and identify
what's in the photo so that we could hop
onto google and start to search
for instance we can see a fire burning
in the middle of this photo that you can
see on the screen here
so maybe we could type in burning
village or something like that they seem
to be palm trees it might be a tropical
area
it's quite dry there's farmland there's
a little building that could be a school
or something and there's mountains
so we could maybe use some of those like
a village fire near
a tropical area or something like that
but these really loosely ended
search terms and and are quite difficult
to
really narrow down and start to get some
decent results
so something that i like to do is to do
an image of our search
and in this session we're going to
answer some of those questions
using different types and different
approaches to
the image of her search method i really
like doing image reverse searching
in my field because it's an easy win to
get
more information or intelligence about
an image or a video
i'm going to use this photo as a case
study to show the different ways that we
can
have a look at a photo in image of earth
searching
when i originally received this photo
the person told me it was taken in
nigeria
so let's see if that actually was taken
in nigeria and if it wasn't
where was it taken so the first approach
we're going to go through
is a google image of our search and we
can get there just from the google home
page
by clicking on the images tab on google
images
we have this little icon right here
which allows us to search by
image so we're going to click that and
we're going to upload our own image
now the results are coming in and
already we get an interesting surprise
so rather than the original context that
this was sent to me in
in being in nigeria we get the result
that it might actually be in myanmar
and there's a few different ways that we
can see that so we can see it over here
but also you'll notice that in our
search box here we have this text
myanmar burma now this is quite
interesting and this happens a lot with
google image of earth search
is that it'll often put in a text with
the image we can change that text as
well and we'll go to that
in a minute so let's scroll down and
have a look at some of our results
okay so we can see that there's an
overwhelming amount of results that say
that this might be in myanmar
uh one of these is a news article and
this is purple because i have visited it
just before
so let's have a look at this one and see
what this news article says
okay so the image doesn't seem to be in
there but it does appear on the page
so we'll have a look at this article
okay that's the same
picture that we were looking for that
appears in this article
so already we have so much more
information than what we started with
when we just started with this image
here in this article we have a small
caption
so we have a date we have a location and
we have a lot more information
than what we started with when we were
just looking at this image
a few minutes ago that's the power of a
simple image of our search and you can
see that just
from a few clicks we've been able to
find out so much more information
the benefit of using google image of
earth search is that you can edit the
text
that comes with the photo and we can
start to build a little list
of search terms after that so we could
type in
village we could type in
[Music]
human rights
accountability and already from
typing in those search terms you can see
that we've got some other search results
and some different reports that might
give us more information than what we
originally started with as well
i like to restrict them down to a
specific date of when i think
the photo may have been taken so we saw
in one of the
news articles that we just looked at the
photo may have been taken around may
in 2020 so what we can do is under the
google tabs
we can click the tools option here this
will open up
an option for us to either search by
image or
time now if we click on that time we
have quite a few options so past hour or
24 hours which is good if you're doing
searches where you want recent imagery
of an event where there might be a lot
of old imagery or past year or past
month
something i really like to utilize a lot
in research
is custom range this custom range option
we can pop in
something such as may 2020 and this will
give us
all of the search results that are
between the 1st of may 2020
and 31st of may 2020 and already
we're seeing that our window of search
results
has been really narrowed down now these
results seem to be
more general just with the keywords we
want the pages that include
matching images and we can see that
we've really narrowed down some of our
search results to being
in that may 2020 period
so just by doing that we have so much
more information than what we originally
started with
when we were just looking at that image
we only had the context that it was
taken in nigeria
now we found out it's in myanmar we
found out a likely date
but we can verify that using satellite
imagery in another session
and it's also started to identify
exactly what was happening
in that image as well one of my other
favorite tools to go through
is the yandex image of earth search and
you can get there just by going to the
index page
which you can type in yandex on any
browser you are using at the moment
and go to the images tab on the left
here and you'll have the same function
that we just used in the google image
reverse search
option as well which is that little
camera icon
that we can click and upload a photo so
i'm going to go through that now
and i'm going to upload a photo the same
photo that we're looking at for our
google
results and already we can see that it's
uploaded the image there's no text with
it but we can see the image there
there's a few other recommendations of
some sort of similar images specifically
that smoke cloud coming out of a village
so you can see a lot of other search
results but what's interesting is that
we get a very different range of search
results and you can see from what we had
in google
over here with our search results the
ones in yandex are completely different
and that's really interesting because
from what we what we've started with
here
where we just had this image before with
no information
no reliable information whatsoever we
got some information from doing a google
image of our search
and now we've done a yandex image of our
search we've just doubled that
information picture in the space of five
to ten minutes
again just through a few simple easy
clicks one of the reasons why i like
yandex a lot
is because of first we can do this
option
called the select crop area now this is
really useful
if you have images for instance if
you're looking for brand names
or if you're looking for specific faces
for example and you want to identify
what's in part of an image you can use
that simple
select crop area rather than having to
go into
paint or preview or photoshop or
whatever image editing software you use
and cutting down an image and then
re-uploading that you can simply do that
select crop area search
and that will go through there and we
can just hit reset to again
search for that full image again the
other reason why i like yandex so much
is because not only does it use the
image reverse search function but it can
also pull
text out of an image now we don't have
text in this image
but thankfully i have an image that we
can use
and this is something written in arabic
but why don't we give that a test
on yandex using that image text function
so what i'll do is i'll save this image
and i'll run it into yandex
just like i did with the last one and
let's see the results that we get
okay so we've got quite a few different
results of
similar text appearing on the screen but
the option that we have here is
recognize
text so i'm going to click that and it's
given me
the text that appears in this photo here
now there's a couple of things that i
could do with that either i could
copy that and run it in a google search
to see
what results come out of that or i could
simply hit translate okay so that's even
translated that for me
so that's a really useful unique
function in there if you have any text
in your images that you can't understand
or you want to pull out automatically
and
and search as well so you would have
noticed that going back to this original
image the process i went through was to
upload that image into both the google
image reverse search icon
or option here as well as the yandex
image reverse search option there
now does that mean for every website or
every online image that you have to do
that you have to save the image and put
it through there
no it doesn't so how can we automate
that a little bit easier well one way
is if we go back to this news article
here
in the popular google chrome browser
there's an option to
right click and do an image reverse
search that's inbuilt in the google
chrome browser so we'll have a look at
that
so if i right click and i go search
google for image
that will automatically put that image
into the
google image of our search option that's
really useful
if you do this a lot and you repeatedly
do
image reverse searches rather than
having to download the
image and then go to the google home
page and then upload it again
all we need to do is that simple right
click function
just like that and we can go into the
search google for image
a plugin that i'm going to go through
and that i find really useful
is the fake news debunker by invid and
we verify
and you can get there just by doing a
search on your browser for
invid fake news plugin what that does is
it gives us a new option
so if i go back to my article and i
right click on here it'll give me an
option to
do a image reverse search through all of
these platforms so google
yandex bing tinai baidu and reddit now
if i click the alt tab
it'll put that image and open up all of
those tabs
to do an image of her search through all
those platforms because if you remember
rightly
yandex gave me different results to what
google gave me
so it really pays to utilize some of
these different platforms for an image
of her search function
just because of the extra information
you can get out of it
so i'll try that for yandex right now so
you can see what happened
after i right click that article in that
photo it's automatically popped it
straight into yandex
so that i can use that image of earth
search function so easily
so if you find yourself on social media
or in a lot of different news websites
and you're consistently doing an image
of earth search or you're starting on
that sort of research
give that plugin a go and it'll save you
a lot more time just by having the right
click feature
to pop that into yandex and then you can
start cropping away
and having a look at certain segments or
using the text function that i showed
previously as well
the fake news debunker plug-in is also
really useful as well because you have
an
image magnifier option and that will
automatically put this
photo into a website where you can start
to
really zoom into the photo to have a
look at specific parts of that image
and that just saves you downloading the
image and
going through it on a photo platform but
rather
you can actually just use it through the
chrome browser
quite easy and efficient like that more
and more a lot of different platforms
are using their own imageverse search
functions
so for example microsoft bing has an
image of a search platform that you can
use
and smaller organizations such as for
example
alibaba also have one so here is alibaba
i've just put in a
search for shirts and i can upload an
image
to search for a specific type of product
that i want to look for
on that platform for a use case example
on the importance of doing an image of
earth search we can look no further
than dating websites here is an account
on
wonder dating which is called lee james
who claims they are from georgia we can
do an image of earth search
on this photo here and see where else it
pops up on the internet
for this case i'm going to have a look
at yandex
and let's see where that where else that
photo is on the internet
okay so we've done a reverse search for
this image on yandex we can go through
and already we can see
that there is a claim of someone being a
dating scammer
we can see another dating website with
zachary holmes
we can go through a little bit more we
can see that there's another dating
scammer
another one another one there's our lee
james and we can see that actually
it's scammers with the pictures of
lieutenant colonel brian denny
who probably isn't involved in dating
websites whatsoever but has had his
image stolen
and replicated over the internet
throughout fake accounts
and this is a common thing for dating
scams as well
we can have a look at another example so
here is veronica williams with a little
bit more
information on their profile claims they
are from cocoa beach
and has an introduction as well hi i'm
veronica coming from a very moral
home respectful and very welcoming so
let's have a look this time we can
perhaps do a search on google we can see
our veronica williams pops up but also
we have fayadah
california city uh we have someone with
a linkedin profile
dating sites in california and we have
some
other ones as well if we do that same
search on yandex just to show the
variation in results we can see that
there are a lot more
accounts using that same image in their
profile pictures
so we can see the importance in
conducting a
simple image of earth search throughout
any field on the internet
just to test the legitimacy of a photo
to look for its authenticity
to identify perhaps more information
about those simple questions that we
were talking about before like who
what where and when we also have a few
different options of doing
image of a search through the mobile
phone as well
the mobile phone that i'm using is an
iphone and one of the
main features that we have of that is
through the google app
the google app has an option called the
google lens and we can see that option
when we
open up the home page and we can see in
the same place that we saw
when we looked at the first idea of
having a look at an image of her search
just to this little icon here next to
the microphone which looks like a little
photo feature when we click on that and
we upload a photo for instance
i'm uploading a picture of my bun me
that i made before
and when we go through that it gives us
an option to
scroll through and have a look at the
similar photos or or
exact photos if that photo was already
online and we can scroll through and
have a look at the other images that
have popped up there
and you can also press different parts
of the image
as well as cropping the image to a
specific part of it so if you're looking
for a type of brand or if you're looking
for a specific object in a photo you can
crop that photo down to that size and
that's all just from the mobile phone
another app that has the image of her
search option on the phone
is the amazon browser through the amazon
application
on apple you can use the same sort of
function which is the little camera icon
located here in the search browser and
you can click that
to upload either an image of a piece of
clothing or something like that or an
item that's being sold on amazon and
that'll have a look at similar options
or the same option if it is available
in the amazon archive images and you can
also
scan items such as barcodes so if you
have a barcode and a photo that you want
to see if that's available on amazon you
can do that sort of same function
as well in this session we've gone
through a lot of different techniques on
how to do an image of earth search
namely how to do it on google and yandex
or
bing or alibaba or even amazon on the
phone and google as well
we've also looked at how to make life a
little bit easier by using those plugins
just to double check
pictures and and get a little bit more
information about where they're from
or what they might be in their context
as well we've applied that to a case
study that we thought was in nigeria but
actually turned out to be myanmar
because of that image of her search and
we found a few little nasty fakes on
dating websites as well
thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed
this session i hope you found it
informative if you did
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