April 3, 2016
By Bellingcat
At 13:30:09 GMT on 18 January 2016, a new YouTube channel called ПАТРИОТ (“Patriot”) uploaded its first video, titled (in Ukrainian) “Appeal of AZOV fighters to the Netherlands on a referendum about EU – Ukraine.” The video depicts six soldiers holding guns, supposedly from the notorious far-right, ultra-nationalist Azov Battalion, speaking in Ukrainian before burning a…
April 2, 2016
This write-up was originally published on www.theosintblog.com American support for rebel groups in Syria is not a new story. The U.S. has backed a variety of rebel groups in Syria in their fight against the Syrian government and ISIS. After the much publicized collapse of the U.S. trained Division 30 at the hands of al-Nusra Front,…
March 25, 2016
By Bellingcat
На суде над украинской летчицей Надеждой Савченко обвинение воспользовалось методикой, с помощью которой команда Bellingcat ранее доказала, что российская артиллерия обстреливала украинские позиции с территории России. Эта методика была представлена в экспертизе, проведенной Александром Бобковым, начальником департамента оперативного мониторинга московского инженерно-технологического центра «СканЭкс». Одной из основных задач «СканЭкс» стал анализ спутниковых снимков местности в районе…
March 25, 2016
By Bellingcat
As part of the case against the Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, the Russian prosecution used the methods previously utilized by Bellingcat in proving that the Russian military, from its own territory, carried out artillery attacks against Ukrainian army positions. These methods were included in the expert testimony of Aleksandr Bobkov, the Head of Operative Monitoring…
March 22, 2016
By Aric Toler
On March 14, eight days before the terrorist attacks in Brussels, the Russian media outlet Lifenews reported (archive) that two Belarusian brothers, Ivan and Aleksey Dovbash, and an accomplice, Marat Yunusov, were planning a terrorist attack in Belgium. After terrorist attacks did take place in Belgium the following week, Lifenews doubled down, naming the brothers Dovbash and Yunusov…
March 22, 2016
By Oryx
Subject to severe sanctions for almost a decade, the proliferation of North Korean conventional armament on the international arms market is an often underreported topic, and many arms deals of the past are completely undocumented. Nonetheless, the traces of these deals still mark many of the world’s conflict areas, and every once in a while…
March 22, 2016
Jaish al-Islam (Arabic: جيش الإسلام) or “Army of Islam” has a reputation for being a competent group. While the group is backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, its success cannot be wholly attributed to its foreign backing (Oweis, 2013). A variety of rebel groups in Syria ranging from the Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army to Ahrar al-Sham are backed by foreign powers, yet none of these groups have come close to emulating Jaish al-Islam’s (JaI) management of the local economy.
March 11, 2016
By Bellingcat
16 июля 2014 года на канале Министерства обороны Украины вышла в эфир программа о ситуации на востоке Украины с подписью «Военнослужащие ВС Украины патрулируют местность в зоне АТО». На видео видны две самоходные огневые установки комплекса «Бук», радиолокационная станция обнаружения воздушных целей «Купол» и радар семейства СТ-68У. На другом видео, вышедшем в эфир того же…
March 9, 2016
By Bellingcat
On July 16, 2014, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s television network aired a program about the military situation in Ukraine with the caption “Servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces patrol the area of the ATO zone.” In a segment of this video, two Buk missile launchers, a Buk Snow Drift Radar, and a ST-68U Tin…
March 4, 2016
By Bellingcat
В 10:40 утра по местному времени 17 июля 2014 года в интернете появилось одно из первых упоминаний, что в Донецк прибыла самоходная огневая установка «Бук». Это был пост в группе ВКонтакте «Донецк — это Украина!». В нем говорилось о прибытии «Бука» по Макеевскому шоссе в Донецк на перекресток проспекта Ильича и бульвара Шахтостроителей в сопровождении трех гражданских машин:…
March 29, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally published on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. It is always an interesting question and one that was posed over on the IntelTechniques.com forums. How can you tell what hour of the day people are most active on Facebook? There are tools out there for Twitter and other platforms, but due to Facebook’s limited…
March 1, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This post was originally published on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. In the first part of this series we examined how to write some code that can slice and dice and image and then submit it to Imagga. By examining the tags that come back we can make a fairly accurate guess as to whether there is…
February 3, 2016
In December 2015 Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both published reports that included claims that Russia had used cluster munitions in its air campaign in Syria. The Russian Defence Ministry responded to those accusations by denying Russia had them at their airbase in Syria: Concerning the suppositions on cluster bombs. Russian aviation does not…
January 22, 2016
For new and ongoing conflicts across the world, the need to document their impact on civilians and the environment upon which they depend is encouraging the development of new research tools and methodologies. Traditional approaches for monitoring environmental risks are notoriously reliant on field access for experts. But with civilians increasingly able to access…
January 11, 2016
One frequent issue encountered by anyone working with user generated content is the misattribution of videos and photographs, something that can occur for a number of reasons. With the conflicts in Syria and Iraq many shocking videos and photographs are shared online on a variety of platforms, and it’s very important to anyone interested in…
January 11, 2016
By Justin Seitz
This article was originally published on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. As part of my previous post on gangs in Detroit, one thing had struck me: there are an awful lot of guns being waved around on social media. Shocker, I know. More importantly I began to wonder if there wasn’t a way to automatically identify when…
December 22, 2015
By Dan Kaszeta
Wikipedia is used widely as a reference tool. The nature of Wikipedia, however, means that it’s accuracy and reliability can be suspect at times. In the area of chemical and biological weapons, Wikipedia is not optimum. It has proven to be inaccurate in some cases, misleading in others, or containing only part of the story….
December 17, 2015
With the conflict in Syria soon to enter its fifth year, large parts of the country have been laid to waste by intense fighting, bombardment and shelling. Understandably, most of the focus has been on the fighting and the direct victims of armed violence, with rather less on other impacts and their consequences, particularly the environmental damage and pollution caused by the conflict.
December 8, 2015
By Bellingcat
Women’s relative invisibility in traditional media has crossed over into digital news delivery. The Bellingcat bootstraps the effort to gender rebalance OSINT investigation. We have curated a list of women in OSINT and are partnering with initiatives aiming to diversify foreign policy and international security. Every week, a news piece or a report is released that…
December 2, 2015
By Justin Seitz
This post originally appeared on the AutomatingOSINT.com blog. Eliot Higgins had an excellent post where he shows how to grab preview images from YouTube videos and use them for verification, or potentially to find additional sites where that video might be shown or linked to. This technique is called reverse image searching which I have covered…