More Than Just a Background: Geolocation Analysis
The famous quote “a picture is worth a thousand words” rings true for open-source intelligence practitioners. Not only can one image transform an investigation, but the background of a photograph can prove to be worthwhile also.
Tracelabs Capture the Flag Example
One example is my experience participating in a Tracelabs CTF last year where I was able to determine the last known location of a missing person through a geolocational analysis. The person of interest was standing in front of a dolphin statue. A Google search of “dolphin statues”, followed by scrolling through google images (for a notable amount of time), provided me with the address as well as 500 points for the team.
By reviewing the background of an image, this also provides the potential to find out the mode of transport used by an individual (car, bus, plane), an area of interest, an individual of interest, or an object of interest.
What to Look Out For
The following can provide insight into the exact location of a photo:
Street signs, number plates, landmarks, statues, graffiti, company buildings/towers, cultural dress, traffic lights and road line markings. The “Some Random Stuff” blog goes into depth about what to look out for on the road with specifics provided for every country around the world.
Bing also provides the ability to reverse image search based on landmarks, plants, and similar images of interest.
What Helps Me with My Analysis?
Choosing a unique point of interest in a photograph and focusing on that. Once all searches have been exhausted on that unique item, I move onto the next. An example of this put into action will be shown below.
How to Test Your Knowledge and Practice Your Skills
Geoguessr — a geographical game which challenges you to become more aware of your surroundings.
Quiztime — a twitter account dedicated towards geolocational challenges. In this blog, I will be going through an example.
TryHackMe Geolocation Quiz — A tutorial on how to geolocate images.
Quiztime Example
On 29 June 2021 Julia Bayer posted a geolocational analysis quiz tagging Quiztime on Twitter. I will go through the steps I used to determine the location below.
Firstly, I identified a unique point of interest. As I can only read/write in English and Serbian, I looked out for any English letters/words of interest.
Putting the sad unicorn pictured below aside, the word that stood out to me was “Otelo”, which I have highlighted below.
I then began to research the unique point of interest “Otelo Graffiti”. Doing a google search provided me with insight that this graffiti is most likely located in Germany (in particular, Berlin).
By then googling “Otelo Graffitti Berlin” to get a full picture of graffiti available in the region, I came across the following image, which is the same location as pictured in the Quiztime tweet.
By placing the caption in Google translate I found the following information:
Searches on this address then provided me with further insight into the location, recent events, and the current state of the gas station, pictured below.
With these steps, the location of the image was found.
To further your geolocational analysis, an assessment can be conducted to determine the time and even the date of a photograph. Assessing the shadows, relevant news and events within that location can be helpful in this pursuit. Bellingcat have released an article which goes into detail regarding the usefulness of sun and shadows in geolocation analysis.
Challenges
Photo filters available on apps like Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook which cover backgrounds and add objects in photos. These disturbances to original photographs can make geolocational analysis challenging.
The prevalence of “selfie” photos, minimising the amount of background showcased in a photo, thus minimising the intelligence attainable.
Misinformation through deepfake satellite imagery, which may be a more prevalent challenge in the future.
Hope you enjoyed this article and learnt something new 😊 Any questions feel free to leave a comment!
