So we all know about the notorious hacker 4Chan and their ability to call in airstrikes on terrorist training camps and find flags based on frog noises and air traffic patterns.
I am an amateur at this but also pretty good. I like to use people that block their license plates as example and see how long it takes me to find their house on Google Earth. They think theyre safe with their plate blocked out, but often leave other information visible like photos of their property (land they live on) and their city and place of work.
I wont post what I put on social media for my friends to see so as to avoid doxxing someone via Google Earth views of their house. There was no interaction between us and no ill intent but Id rather be safe than sorry and not randomly post someones residence for no reason.
It took me less than 15 min using two photos and a city that was visible to locate the residence of the owner of the vehicle. I spent another 10-15 verifying the correct orientation of power lines, number of trees and their arrangement etc down to the bricks in the driveway before I was satisfied I nailed it. And I did.
Be diligent if you want to remain anonymous/private and ensure you do not have any of these things visible. Even things such as recent check ins, yard sale groups, kids sports photos etc can easily be combined with what appears to be an innocuous photo to focus with laser precision on your physical location.
This is not intended to scare; just to keep us safe. Many of us live in nice safe-ish red states but many more are also living behind enemy lines. Be diligent and stay safe pedes.
How would you be able to determine an exactly location from a single photo? Sounds interesting.
He had his town publicly visible so I looked at the photo and noted that it was hilly, forested, and the location of other structures I could see. I noted a gravel road in addition to two paved roads, which told me he lived outside of town so it made it fairly easy to scan around the outskirts for something that matched. It also gave me a 'shape' to look for in the overhead view. I found a spot I thought looked about right and went down into street view, then counted the trees and orientation of them, (two up front followed by a diagonal pattern of them stretching back in opposite directions) the power lines, (four total on his side of the road with three very close together and the fourth having a large space between it and the others) and noted shit tons of tiny details like bushes and driveway bricks etc. I then compared them one by one to street view. The key is knowing where to look based on the initial details unless you want to scan streets for hours. I did wind up using a second public image to help verify but it was not necessary and didnt show much anyway.
As far as 4chan goes I was wrong; Ill fix the original post. They used a handful of images not just one, but they were oriented in mostly one direction. Its still impressive as fuck though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbwUdmHd5MA
OSINT is highly underrated
Extremely. I didnt actually know there was an acronym for it but have been using it for probably a decade now - just for fun. I enjoy figuring things out and solving mysteries/problems.
Highly underrated and extremely powerful. Add 'crowdsourcing' like 4chan and its almost inconceivable how powerful it can be.