While the past few years have seen open-source intelligence become more commercialised and mainstream, there are still plenty of people who enjoy learning foundational OSINT skills at a hobbyist or amateur level. History has shown us that when the world turns to crowd sourcing, the public usually shows up.

The rapid popularity that social media achieved would show us that intelligence gathering would simultaneously become both more streamlined and more difficult. In today's world, we don’t just have normal people and accounts to sort through. Now, we have the added difficulty of dealing with bots and AI-enabled accounts, some of whom can be prolific spreaders of disinformation.

When you’re hunting this disinformation using OSINT techniques, it’s worth considering what is a good investment of your time, and with a lot of disinformation being shared with media, image analysis techniques can often be a great tool for building a picture of what might be going on behind the scenes. Let’s take a look.

This United States airman is using recon images to identify flak positions during the Korean War. Source: Wikipedia.

IM-INT History

While IMINT has become more relevant during the age of social media, it’s an intelligence gathering technique with a far richer history than this. Generally speaking, Image Intelligence gathering methods allow us to gather intelligence using both open and closed source data techniques.

Traditionally, this would typically be exploited by state-based actors using things like aerial reconnaissance footage or satellite imagery, now the adoption of camera-based smartphones means that nearly everyone has an intelligence gathering device on their person.

Like most intelligence sources, we can use different forms of analysis to obtain information. For instance, a simple reverse image search might help us to find out if an image has been recycled or reused, while geolocation methods might assist us in identifying a specific feature or location within an image.

Types

While there are online tools that can assist us in carrying out a proper analysis, we can also use specific software packages and programs to help us carry out some things locally. If you’re a security researcher, you’ll find the security-focused Linux distro’s Parrot OS and Kali Linux to have a good choice of useful tools for analysing images.

Using Kali we can use software to:
Extract Steganography data hidden within an image using stegosuite

Examine an image’s attached metadata or create false metadata via the terminal and exiftool, or
Attach our own steganography to an image.

Exif tool has an online equivalent if you aren’t comfortable navigating the terminal. Source: exif.tools

Online Tools

While this is all pretty cool stuff, you’ll also need/want access to online tools to help complete the picture (pardon the pun).

With these tools, not only can we look at reverse image search and identification (great for disinformation busting and social media analysis), but we can also use separate crowd-sourced tools like the Bellingcat geolocation toolkit to help speed up our analysis techniques.
Like most OSINT strategies, practice makes perfect and you’ll get a lot better at analysing images quickly the more you practice your new skillset.

While we’d encourage you to take the time to learn the Linux terminal to help increase your success with this, some people may not be at the level of comfortably navigating the terminal just yet.

If this is you, then take the time to research some online strategies, as often, you can find an alternative that doesn't have the same heavy learning curve. Give it some thought though. Linux is fun!

Linux is cool but Kali is particularly fun.

Artificial Intelligence

Before the existence of AI-based tools, we’d often have to carry out a lot of image analysis techniques manually. While this can often still be the case, the evolution of usable artificial intelligence based tools means that more often than not, it’s worth considering the inclusion of these tools as well.

Chat GPT can be great for helping learners with clarification. Source chat.openai.com

Tools like Grok or Chat GPT mean that experienced analysts can streamline their workflow and increase their productivity, while beginners might find that AI tools help them develop the skills they need to succeed. If you’re confused about a certain tool or looking for information, you can now ask questions of these tools to help you along your way.

While it won’t work in all circumstances and the information still should be checked to ensure it’s correct, more often than not things like these have much to offer analysts of all levels.

Also, make sure you subscribe for future articles where we look at some useful ways to use AI during your investigations.

Go Check It Out

It goes without saying that the OG online analysis tool has to be Google’s Reverse Image Search. It allows users to quickly find the origin of an image and track its usage across the web. If you’re looking for an alternative provider, then you might find Tineye to be useful.

ExifTool also has an online version that is great for extracting metadata from images, revealing details like the camera model, date of capture, and possibly even GPS coordinates.

ImageMagick Online provides a simple interface for resizing, cropping, and converting image formats without needing to install anything. This can be a useful tool to convert images for automated or mass analysis.

Bellingcats Open-Street map tools is very useful for investigators. Source: bellingcat.com

Finally, you can also explore the Open-Street Map Search tool via this link. Honing your geolocation skills by doing can be a fun yet frustrating challenge.

What tools do you use to explore or validate images online?

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