For those that are confused, the Taliban fist claimed it was repaired a few days ago and posted a picture from 2009 to “prove” it. These pictures were released today on Twitter. I reversed image searched them and they don’t appear to be outdated.

OSINT Tips

For facial recognition for photo tracing use:

Primeyes- while very basic in its free form (you only get 10 searches and are not able to access the full links that the pictures come from), it’s a good starting place. You can take the results that pop up and plug those pictures into reverse image searches to find other results or try to dig through whatever part of the link you can see (you can usually see what website it is on but not access the full link to direct you to the page, you may need to do some snooping). If you pay whatever the monthly price is you won’t be restricted.

Yandex Images- basically Russia’s Google, but it has the most sophisticated facial tracking AI for pictures that allow you to find other photos of people. While it doesn’t work 100% of the time and you will find people that look strikingly similar, it’s one of my go to tools.

For photo tracing/ reverse image searching:

Tineye
Labnol
Yandex

These all work okay. The problem is that you may need to run a photo through all of them to find a result, which doesn’t work 100% of the time. Not the best for social media pictures, more so ones taken from the internet.

Let’s look at an example on how to use them together:

Let’s say you find yourself trying to verify the identity of someone in a picture (can be for any reason). You take a photo you have of that person and put it into primeyes. The software identifies the face and spits out websites that have pictures of that person. If you are using the free version of the software, you screen shot the picture in an attempt to plug it into one of the reverse image searchers to get a result or you try to do digging on the partial link provided. You get a website name, but no information on where on the website the photo is, which may provide a name of the person. So you have to do some digging to get there. If you use Yandex and you are lucky, you may have the face and website in front of you. With yandex, it works best when trying to search for Russians since it primarily pulls its images from VK and other Russian social media websites. Throughout the whole process you need to play around with searching. I rarely get hits on my first attempt.

Any deleted photos or content can be retrieved using the way back machine. The internet is permanent, even if you delete things.

It is crazy how scary it is to go from a picture to someone to accessing information on where they live, work, who they know. Once you connect a face to a name, a name can get you a lot of things.

All of the methods I mentioned can be done using a cellphone, which I do 99% of my work on. There are more sophisticated softwares that can be paid for or downloaded onto a computer for better results, but I have had no issues doing it the free and easy way.

Unconfirmed reports of US airstrike at Iraq-Syria border. My best guess is some Iran-backed group if it’s true.

Islamic State in Greater Sahara leader Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, the orchestrator of the 2017 and 2020 Niger ambushes that left four American soldiers and six French aid workers dead, was killed in a French operation in an undisclosed country.

I don’t know if any of you had been following the Gabby Petito case, but authorities believe they found her remains in Teton, Wyoming. Some context is that she went on a cross country road trip with her fiancé and he came back alone. When Gaby’s parents filed a missing person report, the fiancé, Brian Laundrie, lawyered up and refused to talk to authorities. During the trip police were called to a domestic dispute between the two. Brian is currently missing.

Brian is missing is that he fled his home once authorities named him as a person of Interest