NOTE: This piece was originally published in the E-Zine HVCK. You can see that original version here. There was a time when I’d open my phone first thing in the morning, not to read messages from family, work, or to do my morning meditation, but to read the Twitter feeds of a middle-aged male called… Continue reading
Through the use of publicly available satellite imagery, open source investigative techniques, and a bit of creativity, we can find where and when a photo or video was taken. But sometimes, geolocating footage comes with unique challenges – all of which differ depending on the country, landscape, availability of data, or the quality of the… Continue reading
Political campaigning in India is on the rise as the West Bengali elections near, and so are the mass information campaigns to promote agendas, discredit opposition, and skew narratives. All of this activity has the overarching goal to win the hearts and minds of voters and discredit the opposition through social media manipulation. This case… Continue reading
A Pro-BJP and Pro-Modi network of Twitter accounts are attempting to influence the narrative of politically sensitive topics in India with newly created accounts posting the same text and amplifying specific hashtags. The content amplified is supportive of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by India Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The influence operation attempts to… Continue reading
This post is a list of geospatial datasets to drag into Google Earth Pro, such as NASA daily fires and Wikimapia. I have found these useful in conflict analysis and routine geolocation work as they boost what information is achievable with the Google Earth Pro platform. Google Earth Pro is great when it is contains… Continue reading
TL;DR Identification of privacy exposure of publicly available emails for password reset departments, universities, government departments and private communications. Issue is widespread. I have spent the past month notifying universities and non-government groups affected. I recently found a data leak through a Google search string which gave results of information that should probably not be… Continue reading
![How I Scrape and Analyse Twitter Networks [Case Study]](https://i0.wp.com/benjaminstrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Screenshot-2020-05-27-at-09.11.07-1.png?fit=1200%2C658&ssl=1)
This ‘how-to’ report is to assist those conducting research on information operations or performing a network analysis on Twitter. It may also be useful to those seeking to hunt bots, track automation, capture breaking events or learn how to scrape data. Because many have asked about this from varying pockets of the world, I have… Continue reading
![Finding McAfee: Geolocation & Imagery Analysis [Case Study]](https://i0.wp.com/benjaminstrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/1_4hV5ZNEQt6VN-BTSoC6HfA.png?fit=700%2C525&ssl=1)
Identifying past, current, and possible future locations through the geolocation and chronolocation of media provided by a specific user. This case study is based on a challenge from well-known entrepreneur, John McAfee, to show how relative geolocation of two points on a chronological timeline can give a likely path and possible locations in between. To… Continue reading
Sock accounts are used by bitcoin scammers as a way to establish authenticity on social media platforms. A sockpuppet is an identity managed by a human operator, with the purpose to deceive a target audience. In this case, its purpose is to scam bitcoin investors by luring them into investment services. If you are at… Continue reading
![Tracing a dark web service on the blockchain [Case Study]](https://i0.wp.com/benjaminstrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/1_KW3mcwk6r1nHDPYU2lO0bA.png?fit=1200%2C640&ssl=1)
Cryptocurrency crimes and scams are inevitable, and there’s no place better than the dark web with the added anonymity. However, not only is it easy to identify the relationship between certain sites, but there are also a number of ‘digital fingerprints’ an onion site can leave behind. In this case study, we take a look… Continue reading