OSINT Insider Issue #1 - Image Forensics Tools

This is the first issue of the OSINT Insider newsletter, here you’ll find an extended release of my Image Forensics Tools post from LinkedIn. In addition, later this month paid subscribers will receive another issue titled “Making a Honeypot: Tools, Laws/Regulations, Tutorial” where they will receive exclusive insights from a compliance expert on the GDPR/CCPA/etc implications of honeypots. Those subscribers will also learn how to create honeypots, their use-cases, a technical explanation of how they work, and other deep insights. Upgrade to a paid subscription so you don’t miss out on these exclusive insights; there’s a 20% discount for a limited time at the end of this first issue.

Image forensics has evolved from basic EXIF data usage to advanced methodologies that can be used to detect whether a photo's been edited or modified. Today you can utilize techniques like Error Level Analysis, ML-powered deblurring, and deep learning anomaly detection to extract far more intelligence value from images than you ever could before. Of course, we have been compiling a list of image forensic tools/resources and their capabilities at Farnsworth Intelligence as part of our knowledge base. Today I am releasing the extended list to my OSINT newsletter subscribers:

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EXIFMeta

🔗 URL: https://exifmeta.com/
🛡️ Defanged: [exifmeta[.]com/]

• Free Online EXIF & Metadata Viewer.

• Get device information: model, manufacturer, etc.

• GPS data: latitude, longitude, altitude, etc.

• Capture information: flash settings, aperture, shutter speed, lens type, focal range, etc.

• Displays name and copyright data.

• Extracts additional metadata from images.

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Forensically Beta

🔗 URL: https://29a.ch/photo-forensics/#forensic-magnifier
🛡️ Defanged: [29a[.]ch/photo-forensics/#forensic-magnifier]

• Tool for forensic analysis of images.

• Modules included:

  • Magnification

  • Clone Detection

  • Error Level Analysis

  • Noise Analysis

  • Level Sweep

  • Luminance Gradient

  • Principal Component Analysis

  • Meta Data

  • Geo Tags

  • Thumbnail Analysis

  • JPEG Analysis

  • String Extraction

• Has a detailed help page with explanations, tutorials, and more.

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FotoForensics

🔗 URL: https://fotoforensics.com/
🛡️ Defanged: [fotoforensics[.]com/]

• Tool for forensic analysis of images.

• Modules included:

  • Digest

  • Error Level Analysis

  • Hidden Pixels

  • ICC+ (Color Profile Emulation)

  • JPEG % Estimator

  • Meta Data

  • Strings

  • Source

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Image Matching WebUI (IMCUI)

🔗 URL: https://github.com/Vincentqyw/image-matching-webui
🛡️ Defanged: [github[.]com/Vincentqyw/image-matching-webui]

• Efficiently matches image pairs by extracting points in images.

• Uses multiple image matching algorithms.

• Features a Graphical User Interface (GUI) designed using Gradio.

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Image Verification Assistant

🔗 URL: https://mever.iti.gr/forensics/
🛡️ Defanged: [mever[.]iti[.]gr/forensics/]

• Tool for forensic analysis of images.

• Includes modules for:

  • OMGFuser algorithm

  • MM-Fusion algorithm

  • TruFor algorithm

  • OW-Fusion algorithm

  • Double JPEG quantization inconsistencies (DQ)

  • JPEG Ghosts (GHOST)

  • JPEG blocking artifact inconsistencies (BLOCK)

  • Error Level Analysis (ELA)

  • Median filtering noise residue (MEDIAN)

  • High frequency noise (WAVELET)

  • CAGI-Inversed

  • Splicebuster

  • CMFD

  • CAGI

  • DCT

  • Mantranet

  • Noiseprint

  • Metadata Analysis

• Includes detailed example cases, explanations of methods, and links to relevant academic studies/papers for various methodologies used.

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Rainbolt Photoshop Tip

🔗 URL:

🛡️ Defanged: [https://youtu[.]be/Ue94gpWqEkM?si=ikJz77EljyIQnFYO&t=90]

• Tip by Rainbolt.

• 90 seconds into the video, he explains how to restore raw uncropped images in Photoshop for .dng files.

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StolenCameraFinder

🔗 URL: https://www.stolencamerafinder.com/
🛡️ Defanged: [www[.]stolencamerafinder[.]com/]

• Search the web for photos taken with a specific camera.

• Uses the camera's serial number stored in the image's EXIF data.

• Helpful for locating stolen cameras.

• Can also link photos taken with the same camera from across the internet.

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Steganography Online

🔗 URL: https://stylesuxx.github.io/steganography/
🛡️ Defanged: [stylesuxx[.]github[.]io/steganography/]

• Basic FOSS tool for encoding a message into an image.

• Can also decode images encoded with this tool.

• A niche tool, unlikely to be useful in most situations.

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Aperi'Solve

🔗 URL: https://www.aperisolve.com/
🛡️ Defanged: [www[.]aperisolve[.]com/]

• Online platform that performs layer analysis on images.

• Uses multiple tools for deeper analysis, including:

  • zsteg

  • steghide

  • outguess

  • exiftool

  • binwalk

  • foremost

  • pngcheck

  • strings

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Depix

🔗 URL: https://github.com/spipm/Depix
🛡️ Defanged: [github[.]com/spipm/Depix]

• Technique to recover plaintext from pixelized screenshots.

• Works only on pixelized images created with a linear box filter.

• Requires knowledge of the editor, website, or app where the screenshots were taken.

• Test data must be made with the same font, text size, and colors as the original.

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MAXIM

🔗 URL: https://huggingface.co/google/maxim-s3-deblurring-realblur-r
🛡️ Defanged: [huggingface[.]co/google/maxim-s3-deblurring-realblur-r]

• AI model for unblurring photos.

• Used by many major AI unblur tools found online.

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Memery

🔗 URL: https://github.com/deepfates/memery
🛡️ Defanged: [github[.]com/deepfates/memery]

• Search over large image datasets using natural language and computer vision.

• Allows natural language search over local images.

• Example: Search for "a line drawing of a woman facing to the left" and get relevant results.

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EXIF Viewer Pro

🔗 URL: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/exif-viewer-pro/mmbhfeiddhndihdjeganjggkmjapkffm
🛡️ Defanged: [chromewebstore[.]google[.]com/detail/exif-viewer-pro/mmbhfeiddhndihdjeganjggkmjapkffm]

• Chrome extension that can be used on photos on a page while staying on the page.

• Includes modules for:

  • Shutter speed

  • Aperture

  • Focal length

  • Exposure mode

  • Exposure metering

  • Sensitivity

  • White balance

  • Picture control

  • Image quality

  • Lens

  • EXIF data

  • Histogram

  • And more!

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ImageIdentify

🔗 URL: https://www.imageidentify.com/
🛡️ Defanged: [www[.]imageidentify[.]com/]

• Uses Wolfram's deep neural networks to identify what is in an image.

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ImageAmigo Deblur

🔗 URL: https://imageamigo.com/deblur/
🛡️ Defanged: [imageamigo[.]com/deblur/]

• Removes motion blur and other sources of blur from an image.

• Uses techniques from the paper at arXiv:1612.02177.

• Incorporates DeblurGAN-v2 and DeblurGAN.

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