October 1, 2024 · 3 min read
Discover Predicta Graph
Predicta Lab announces the launch of Predicta Graph, its new visualisation and data gathering tool for OSINT investigations.
August 29, 2024 · 3 min read
How to discover a major hacker's identity with OSINT — Solution 2
A second sequence of open-source discoveries leading from the hacker USDoD's Twitter profile to his real-life identity.
August 28, 2024 · 4 min read
How to discover a major hacker's identity with OSINT — Solution 1
Last week CrowdStrike revealed the identity of the famous hacker USDoD and today we will retrace how he was discovered with an open source investigation of our own.
May 15, 2024 · 4 min read
Investigating Lockbit’s leader
On May 7, 2024, the Office of Foreign Assets Control along with other american government agencies revealed several pieces of information about LockBit’s leader, Lockbitsupp. Let’s see what we can find out about him using this information.
April 16, 2024 · 7 min read
GEOINT: Using Overpass Turbo for OSINT
Overpass Turbo (OPT) allows you to search for mapped information in the Open Street Map database using command-line queries, making it an unrivalled geolocation tool. This article will show you how to build simple queries to make OPT accessible to everyone.
February 22, 2024 · 3 min read
USE CASE: Investigating a Lockbit’s affiliate
After the FBI and the NCA revealed their years-long investigation on the ransomware group Lockbit, we retrace how much information a single email address from OFAC’s sanctions list can lead to with Predicta Search.
February 6, 2024 · 2 min read
GEOINT: finding a picture taken from a plane
On February 4th, @fs0c131y shared an OSINT quizz inviting his followers to find where a picture taken from a plane was shot. Here’s a resolution found and written by Eric B., edited by Predicta Lab.
January 29, 2024 · 5 min read
GEOINT: Geolocation in the Gaza Strip
Two members of the Predicta Lab team each tried their hand at geolocating a photo of the Khan Younis evacuation taken from a Le Monde article: here's how each of them worked to reach a conclusive result.
May 17, 2023 · 6 min read
OSINT Tools: Streamline Your Investigations with Tampermonkey
Tampermonkey is a browser extension that lets you add or modify the features of the websites you visit: let's see how to create your own userscripts to save time in your investigations.
April 26, 2023 · 4 min read
Securi'Tips: What is phishing and how do you detect it on your smartphone?
Despite appearances, this message wasn't sent by ANTAI (the French traffic fine authority): it's a trap designed to harvest the recipient's payment information. Let's take a look at exactly what phishing is and how to detect it on a smartphone.
March 31, 2023 · 6 min read
GEOINT: Measuring the Distance of an LBD Shot
A video from the March 28 protests shows a defense ball launcher (LBD) round being fired at a protester: we use OSINT to check whether the firing distance was less than the 10 meters recommended for LBD 40 shots.
March 24, 2023 · 12 min read
How to remove your personal data from Google?
You've probably searched your name on Google before, chances are the results included some social media profiles and maybe even some pages you had forgot existed. This article explains how to get Google to deindex a web page containing your personal data.
February 14, 2023 · 7 min read
OSINT Tool: How to transcribe a video
How to install and run Whisper, the automatic speech-recognition system developed by OpenAI, with limited coding skills — and put it to the test on a TikTok video of a Russian soldier describing combat.
January 25, 2023 · 6 min read
GEOINT: Documenting destruction in Donbas
Finding the locations shown in a drone video of Marinka in Donbas and reconstituting the route taken by the drone, to document the destruction caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
January 17, 2023 · 3 min read
GEOINT: Geolocation using topography
This year, the transition found me staring at my screen saver for maybe a bit too long when I decided to make the most of it by geolocating the beautiful picture it was showing. So here's the challenge: geolocating my screen-saver without reverse image search!
January 9, 2023 · 5 min read
IMINT: From Russia with love
This year, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered his annual New Year's address standing in front of a group of soldiers in combat uniform. This address received a lot of attention and was largely shared across social media platforms.
December 29, 2022 · 3 min read
GEOINT: How to find the location of a protest
With many ongoing social crises in the world, it has become common to come across videos of protests. Using an example from Bolivia, we are going to show how we can find the location where this type of content is taken.
June 29, 2022 · 6 min read
What you should know before joining the IT Army
A mere two days after the start of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government declared the creation of the IT Army, the first offensive cyber-group of the kind. Here is what aspiring members should know about its structure, its risks and its first trap.
April 15, 2022 · 6 min read
GEOINT: How to find the localisation of a video of Ukraine
Since the beginning of the russian invasion in Ukraine, the Internet is overloaded with pictures and videos of the conflict. This article will demonstrate how to pin point the location shown in a video of Ukraine using open source research, a method also called GEOINT.
March 4, 2022 · 5 min read
OSINT Tutorial: Searching Tweets by Date and Location, Using the Russian Invasion of Ukraine as an Example
In this article, we'll look at how to target a Twitter search to get results that match our expectations as precisely as possible. Advanced search options help reduce the amount of information to verify during an investigation.
February 23, 2022 · 4 min read
OSINT Tutorial: How to Unmask Disinformation Using Metadata
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but during disinformation campaigns those words can be lies. Fortunately, there is a type of data that lets open-source researchers spot this kind of manipulation: metadata.
February 16, 2022 · 4 min read
Repurposing Content: A Real Political Weapon on TikTok
As part of the presidential campaign, Predicta Lab set up an observatory to monitor conspiracy theories on social media. This article takes a closer look at some of the results discussed during the Anti-complot show on Friday, February 4.
February 8, 2022 · 3 min read
TikTok and disinformation, a perfect match
To study how the electoral campaign was evolving on TikTok, we analyzed videos posted during the month of January that used the surnames of the leading presidential candidates as hashtags.
December 29, 2021 · 6 min read
Infodemic: How Did the 'Jean-Michel Trogneux' Rumor Spread?
Natacha Rey, a figure close to conspiracy theorist circles, concluded that the French First Lady is a transgender woman who was previously named Jean-Michel Trogneux. Predicta Lab traces how this conspiracy narrative spread.
December 1, 2021 · 4 min read
Measuring the increase in air traffic between the Middle East and Minsk
The New York Times reported that the amount of weekly flights from Middle Eastern locations to Minsk doubled from October to November 2021. Predicta Lab retraces this analysis step-by-step in order to verify the veracity of its findings.
November 30, 2021 · 4 min read
OSINT Challenge: Where is Baptiste?
Baptiste Robert or @fs0c131y on Twitter challenged his followers to show off their OSINT skills by finding his flight number merely using one picture. Here is how one of our analysts took him up on this challenge.
November 22, 2021 · 9 min read
Investigating the Twitter network « Avec Zemmour »
The French presidential election are just 5 months away yet the French political scene is more fragmented than ever. Predicta Lab conducted an analysis of the network in support of Éric Zemmour on Twitter in order to better understand who are his supporters and how they organize on social media.
October 19, 2021 · 6 min read
EpikFail: Cybersquatting
On September 13th Anonymous released 180 gigabytes-worth of private data from Epik, the American alt-right’s favorite web hosting company. Predicta Lab took on to explore the 2951 Epik domains registered to addresses in France.
