OSINT & AI: Tools
My SANS OSINT Summit presentation in April was about the good and bad that artificial intelligence (AI) can provide for OSINT investigations. My main focus was on the impact of deepfakes, and as the talk was only 20 minutes, I simply didn't have the time to delve into the “good” as much as I would have liked. As a result, this blog aims to do just that.
One of the great things about AI is the amount of sophisticated tools that have come about because of this technology. I thought I would share a list of some of the noteworthy open source tools which can be used in OSINT investigations. This technology is amazing, and I wonder what this list will look like 5 years from now!
Sock Puppet Creation
AI can be very helpful when creating a quality sock puppet (fake account) for social media investigations. For these profiles, its helpful to make it look legitimate so that social media platforms do not mistake it for a bot or suspect suspicious activity, and thus terminate the profile.
Profile Pictures
If you want a realistic profile picture and don’t want to use a celebrity/unknown individual, there are several websites that can provide you with deepfake image you can use, listed below:
Generated Photos Face Generator
Profile Details
The Fake Name Generator Tool and Random Name Generator provides you not only with a fake name, but several other fake details including birthday, email address and residential address which you can use for your sock puppets.
The Face Info website also can provide you with fake usernames, names, images of fake social media profiles and text messages.
Verification
Is Instagram asking you to verify your account for your sock puppet, by uploading a selfie video? Don’t fear, you won’t need to use your face as Sketchfab is a great way to fix this issue. This site allows you to generate a video of an individual (who does not exist), moving side to side, which will pass the verification test.
Image Analysis
Tools that use AI have become very handy especially for image analysis during OSINT investigations, here's some great ones:
Reverse Image Searching
Google, Bing, Yandex, Primeyes & TinEye use AI to generate results.
OSINTCombine also have a reverse image search analyser which combines the results of Google and Yandex.
Search4faces allows you to search for faces, also finding TikTok users (thank you @cyb_detective for sharing).
Removing/Adding Items in Images
Cleanup.pictures allows you to remove any unwanted material in an image, great for geolocation purposes, or to enhance your reverse image results. (thanks @lorandbodo for sharing).
Another platform which can do this is Deep Angel.
Image Clarity/Enhancement
Have a blurry image and you want to change that? Don’t let your POI who uploaded photos in 2009 from their Motorola affect your OSINT. AI has you covered! Here are a couple of noteworthy tools that fix the quality/resolution of images:
App Remini (thanks @tradecraft14 for sharing)
Identification of Items
Birds
Merlin Bird ID is a really interesting application where you can detect the type of bird through the sounds it makes, or through an image of a bird. So if your POI has uploaded a video/photo with a bird in the background, you may be able to confirm where your POI resides if a bird is native to a particular region.
Cars
Carnet allows you to identify a vehicle, including the model number and year. This can also be used to identify vehicles in Google street view for example (thanks @dutch_osintguy for sharing).
Food
Caloriemama is able to identify differing types of food.
Plants
Plantnet allows you to identify different plants.
Music
Does your POI have music in the background? In a language you perhaps don't have a proficiency in? Shazam can help identify the song, and possibly indicate the language your POI speaks.
Language
Deepl is a great translation tool that uses AI technology.
Influencers
Is your POI an Influencer? I previously wrote a blog about investigating individuals who are content creators, and there are influencer marketing programs such as Hype Auditor to assess ones engagement on their social media.
Hope you learnt something new and enjoyed the blog!
