Assisting Your Fraud Examination With Online & Open Source ......Search Strategy: Unknown Social...

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www.snowdropconsulting.co.uk

Snowdrop Consulting Ltd

Assisting Your Fraud Examination With Online & Open Source Intelligence

Dr Stephen Hill

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Investigating Online

It has been estimated that roughly 90% of

valuable intelligence comes from open sources

According to the CIA open sources often equal

or surpass classified information in monitoring

and analysing issues including terrorism,

proliferation, and counterintelligence…

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Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)

Open source intelligence is intelligence from publicly

available sources – open refers to ‘overt’

Monitoring, finding, selecting, reviewing, reporting,

informing

Used to assist in intelligence gathered on an individual

for example

Region, cultural background, historical data (what

have they done in the past that they may do in the

future?)…

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Technological Development & Challenges for Online Investigations

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Dark Net

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The Hidden Wiki

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Forums & IRC

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Fake or Real?

www.snowdropconsulting.co.uk

Snowdrop Consulting Ltd

Search Techniques

& Useful Sites for Intelligence

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Getting Online

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IP Address

IP addresses can be either static or dynamic

Static IP addresses never change

Static IP addresses reveal information including

the continent, country, region, and city in which a computer is located; the ISP

(Internet Service Provider) that services that particular computer

Dynamic IP addresses are temporary and are assigned each time

a computer accesses the Internet

They are, in effect, borrowed from a pool of IP addresses that are

shared among various computers

Static IP addresses are considered somewhat less secure than

dynamic IP addresses, as they are easier to track for data mining

purposes…

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IP and DNS

Every computer that hosts data on the Internet has a unique

numerical address (IP Address)

For example, the numerical address for the Facebook.com is

173.252.110.27

People don’t want to remember long strings of numbers

Domain Name System (DNS) was developed

DNS, a critical part of the Internet's technical infrastructure,

correlates a numerical address to a word

To access the Facebook website, you could type the IP into the

address box of your web browser. But most people prefer to use

facebook.com…

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Understanding the URL

File or directory name:

Full path name—

leading directories and

file name—of the file

holding the information

Server name:

Internet

domain name

on the Web

Protocol:

Internet

protocol to

use

http:// acfe.com / training-events

what-to-get how-to-get-there:// where-to-go /

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The Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

http://www.acfe.com/uploadedFiles/ACFE_Website/Content/rttn/2012-report-to-nations.pdf

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The Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

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Search Engines

When to use a search engine to search the Web?

You have a narrow or obscure topic or idea to research

You are looking for a specific site

You want to search the full text of millions of pages

You want to search for particular types of documents, file types, source locations, languages, date last modified, etc...

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www.google.co.uk

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Google Alerts

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Search Engines

www.Bing.com

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Search Engines

http://duckduckgo.com

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Cluster/Visual Search Engines

www.cluuz.com/

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Slash Tag – Blekko Original

https://edit.blekko.com/

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Image & Video Location Search

http://www.jotpix.com

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Google/Bing Image Search

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Google/Bing Image Search

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Reverse Image Search

http://www.tineye.com/

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Faceifi App

http://faceifi.com/

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Blog Searching

http://www.icerocket.com/

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Meta Search Engines

Searches multiple search engines like Google, Yahoo, Yandex...

http://www.dogpile.co.uk/

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Meta Search Engines

http://www.ixquick.com/uk/

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Where to Find Search Engines?

www.searchenginecolossus.com

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Finding Stolen Goods

http://www.marktplaats.nl/

http://www.craigslist.org

http://www.ebay.com

http://www.gumtree.com

http://www.qoop.nl/

http://www.ebay*?

* ccTLD - .nl, .de, .jp

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Deep Web People Search

http://pipl.com/

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Deep Web (People) Search

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Deep Web (People) Search

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Deep Web (People) Search

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A Criminal Hotspot?

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Deep Web Example

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Deep Web Example

www.onecraigs.com

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Deep Web Example

www.onecraigs.com

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Advanced Search Techniques

Phrase searching: “fraud in Scotland”

Boolean search*: AND fraud, NOT corruption

Google Alternative: +fraud, -corruption

Boolean search: fraud OR scam OR swindle

Boolean search*: Thomas NEAR Edison

Filetype:pdf, xls / Info:URL / Site:domain name …

* http://www.exalead.com/search

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Truncation & Wildcards *

investigat* = investigate, investigated, investigation etc

psych*ist = psychologist, psychiatrist

"Dr ** Director of Snowdrop Consulting“ = ?

"the * population of Amsterdam is" = ?

Note: You can have up to 4 wildcards in a row (****)

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Spelling & Typos

Remember words are can be spelt differently

or there may be a misspelt word or typo on the

website you are looking for...

Tyres & Tires, colour & color

cigarettes,香煙, papierosy (English, Chinese, Polish?)

Stephen Hill, Steven Hill, Steve Hill

Serach Engine, Fraud Invesdigation...

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Typo Apps

http://typohound.com

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Translation Tools

http://translate.google.com

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Translation Tools

http://transl8it.com

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The “social” in social media implies a conversation The difference between social media and the TV is that with the latter, viewers seldom engage with the programme-makers of the show that they are watching…

Social Media Investigations

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So who uses Social Media?

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Search Strategy: Know Social Media ID

Search KnowEm, NameChk, or Snitch Name for site

matches

Conduct site-specific searches

Browse/search subject’s network (if access allowed)

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Search Strategy: Unknown Social Media ID

Use meta-search tools for name search

Look for identifiers like hometown, age, birthday

ID family members or cohabitants via public records,

then search for their identities on social networks

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How to Query a Social Media

Username

If you have the details of a users online name

then run the following queries on Google:

Johnsmith Site:www.facebook.com

“Johnsmith” Site:www.facebook.com

You could then try:

site:twitter, site:myspace, site:google+

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How to Query a Social Media

Username

You may also wish to look at the following queries on

Google:

“Johnsmith” Site:www.ebay.co.uk

Platinum engagement ring Site:www.ebay.co.uk

Or

site:craigslist, site:oodle, etc

Or

02076083445 Site:www.ebay.co.uk

Stolen vehicle?

site:exchangeandmart.co.uk

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Facebook Trick

It is possible to use Facebook to recognise a

photo to identify ‘tags’ associated to a photo

Upload a photo into your profile (sock puppet) and

identify what ‘tags’ are derived from it…

Kim Lau

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Facebook Trick

It is possible to use Facebook to identify

someone via the ‘account finder’ options

Go to your Facebook login page (sock puppet)

Do not login but click on ‘Forgot Password’

You need to know the email address of the person

you wish to identify

Facebook will then prompt with a photo asking if this

is you…

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LinkedIn Advanced Search

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Twitter Search & Analysis

http://topsy.com

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Twitter Alerts Tool

http://tweetalarm.com

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Facebook Search

Http://www.facebooksearch.com

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Facebook Group Search

http://www.facebook.com/search.php?sfxp=1&c1=10&c2=141&type=groups&q=420

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Facebook Group Search

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Twitter Search

http://www.bing.com/maps

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Social Media Integration

Many sites require logins or a certain degree of

connection to see specifics

Site integration is increasing

Look for the weakest link

Example:

Foursquare/Facebook updates are only accessible by

“friends”

Users may sync and publish updates to Twitter

Twitter updates are publicly available

Also consider looking on MySpace & YouTube...

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You Never Know!

http://www.youtube.com

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Snowdrop Consulting Ltd

Tracing a Domain Owner

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FIFA World Cup Scam

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FIFA World Cup 2014

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FIFA World Cup 2014

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FIFA World Cup 2014

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WHOIS Lookup

http://whois.domaintools.com

Suspects domain name

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WHOIS Lookup

http://whois.domaintools.com

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Wayback Machine

http://archive.org/web

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Snowdrop Consulting Ltd

Security Online

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Disguising your ID

Every time you surf the Internet, your IP

address is publicly visible to everyone on target

network resources...

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Sock (Finger) Puppets

4 steps to create a sock puppet:

Create fake ID – use name generator

Create fake profiles/user accounts on Facebook etc.

Fake/disguised email, phone, and IP details

Consider payment method – pre-paid credit card…

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Disguising your Online ID

http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

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Documenting Social Media

Intelligence

Record URL’s (especially Facebook)

Email communications (keep copies of relevant

correspondence)

Screen capture – Print screen, Save As or

apps such as ‘Camtasia’ or ‘HTTrack’

Depending on nature of case keep hard copies

of screen shots, emails etc…

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Digital Case File

Documentation

Dates, times, accounts, IDs, images, video, chat,

messages

Recordings

Screen records of the detailed investigation

Website Details

HTML, links, bookmarks, etc…

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Disguising your IP Location

Proxy and VPN services re-route your Internet traffic

and change your IP

A Proxy is like a Web filter

Proxy will only secure traffic via the Internet

browser using the proxy server settings

A VPN encrypts all of your traffic

VPNs replace your ISP and route all traffic through

the VPN server, including all programs and

applications...

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Disguising your IP Location

There are many products on the market to enable you

to hide your IP address…

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TOR

https://www.torproject.org/index.html.en

www.snowdropconsulting.co.uk

Snowdrop Consulting Ltd

Assisting Your Fraud Examination With Online & Open Source Intelligence

Dr Stephen Hill

Email: shill@snowdropconsulting.co.uk

Twitter: @SnowdropInfo

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