September 30, 2016
By Bellingcat
On September 28, the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) held a press conference in which they presented evidence surrounding the downing of Flight MH17. Leading up to the event, the JIT made its intent clear: the weapon type and launch site would be announced, but no blame would be directly assigned. The JIT followed through on its…
September 28, 2016
Some of the latest commercial satellite imagery confirms that the USNS Invincible is currently operating from Manama, Bahrain—home of the U.S. Navy’s fifth Fleet. Subordinate to the naval arm’s Military Sealift Command (or MSC), the ship functions as a “missile range instrumentation ship” capable of collecting ballistic missile launch data over 2000 km away. The vessel…
September 27, 2016
Am 21. Juli 2014 präsentierte das russische Verteidigungsministerium seine Beweise im Bezug auf dem am 17. Juli abgeschossenen Flug MH17. Bellingcat hat die in dieser Pressekonferenz gemachten Behauptungen im Detail untersucht und gezeigt, dass alle wesentlichen Aussagen der damaligen Pressekonferenz falsch sind. Dies reicht von den Behauptungen über die präsentierten Satellitenbilder bis hin zu den…
September 26, 2016
On July 21st 2014 the Russian Defence Ministry presented their evidence relating to the downing of Flight MH17 on July 17th 2014. Bellingcat has previously examined the claims made in this press conference in great detail, demonstrating how all the major claims made in the press conference were false, from claims about satellite imagery to…
September 23, 2016
Satellite photography made available to Bellingcat courtesy of Planet confirms that parts of the Shaer gas field in Syria’s eastern Homs governorate were indeed destroyed by the Islamic State as suggested. By contrasting the two high-resolution color-corrected images taken by Planet at 34.850, 37.900 – close to the recorded epicenter of the seismic event, which…
September 23, 2016
On September 6th 2016, videos and photographs posted to social media channels of the Civil Defense Team in Aleppo, Aleppo Media Center, “Basel Aslan” Hospital, Smart News Agency, and Qasioun News Agency alleged the use of a chlorine barrel bomb by the Syrian government in Aleppo in an area called Sukkari, which resulted in a…
September 22, 2016
Gestern veröffentlichte Bellingcat seinen Bericht über die Bombardierung des Hilfskonvois des syrischen Roten Halbmonds am 19. September. Der Bericht untersuchte mehrere Aspekte des Angriffs anhand frei verfügbarer Informationen (Open Source), darunter auch ein Vergleich eines Trümmerstücks, bei dem es sich anscheinend um die Hecksektion einer OFAB 250-270 Bombe handelt. Dies wurde zuerst von Conflict Intelligence…
September 22, 2016
Yesterday, Bellingcat published its report on the bombing of the Syrian Red Crescent aid convoy on September 19th. The report examined various aspects of the attack using open source information, including the comparison of what appeared to be the tail section of a OFAB 250-270 bomb that appeared in images from the attack, first published…
September 21, 2016
On September 16th 2016 social media reports began to surface of a chemical weapons attacks by ISIS on multiple villages in the Aleppo area. Initial reports included images of a munition and blisters alleged to be the result of the attacks: ISIS has shelled the Kurdish village of Umm Hosh with mortars filled with chemical…
September 21, 2016
By Nick Waters
This article was written collaboratively with Bellingcat contributor Hady Al-Khatib At 1930 Syrian time on 19 September, a Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy was attacked. Around 20 civilians were killed, including Omar Barakat, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent’s director in Urum al-Kubra. Eighteen trucks containing aid were destroyed. The Syrian Red Crescent called it a “flagrant violation of…
September 5, 2016
By Aric Toler
When most people think about open source research, they think about uncovering social media materials of soldiers on the front-lines of the wars in Ukraine and Syria, or geolocating video footage of significant events with Google Earth. While open source materials have led a mini-revolution in how conflicts are reported online, there is another area where there…
September 1, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally published on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. Welcome back! In this series of blog posts we are wrapping the awesome OnionScan tool and then analyzing the data that falls out of it. If you haven’t read parts one and two in this series then you should go do that first. In this post we…
August 11, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This entry was originally posted on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. Welcome back good Python soldiers. In Part One of this series we created a wrapper around OnionScan, a fantastic tool created by Sarah Jamie Lewis (@sarajamielewis). If you haven’t read Part One then go do so now. Now that you have a bunch of data (or you…
July 28, 2016
By Justin Seitz
You may have heard of this awesome tool called OnionScan that is used to scan hidden services in the dark web looking for potential data leaks. Recently the project released some cool visualizations and a high level description of what their scanning results looked like. What they didn’t provide is how to actually go about…
July 14, 2016
“Even a regimented press will again and again betray their nation’s interests to a painstaking observer”. William Donovan (OSS Director) “Today you are the media, it is your duty to report and keep the hope alive! You are the media, we are one!” Mir Hossein Mousavi (former Iranian Prime Minister) Upstate New York, 1883 is…
June 2, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally posted on the Hunchly blog on Medium. This story starts with Sidney Crosby. A professional hockey player and Canadian icon. I can neither confirm nor deny that I welled up like a small child at the Hockey Hall of Fame’s “Golden Goal” display (I will never forget that moment). So imagine…
June 1, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally published on AutomatingOSINT.com. In the first part of this series we covered how to extract email accounts from SQLite databases and pull additional information from FullContact.com to find social media accounts or other online profiles that are associated with those email addresses. In this post we will apply much the same technique except…
May 13, 2016
The Syrian Archive maintains an extensive video database of all known allegations in which civilians have been reported killed or injured by Russia since September 30th 2015. This is one of the datasets that the Syrian Archive has collected, and we will continue working on collecting and creating other video datasets of violations by all…
May 3, 2016
By Nick Waters
On the 25 February 2016 a video (Video 1) was posted in the video site “Liveleak.com” titled “Shelling of Checkpoint in Ukraine” with the description “Reports suggest the pro-Russian separatists fired on the Police checkpoint in Yasinovataya, Ukraine”. It is just one video amongst the huge amount of information produced and posted on the internet…
May 2, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally published on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. I will be the first to tell you that I know little about forensics compared to most law enforcement or private forensic examiners. One thing that I always found amazing was looking at the result of a forensic acquisition and seeing all of that magical data flowing…