Investigator515

The evolution from landline to mobile device dragged us into the modern age. If you’re a regular What the Tech reader, you may have noticed that our early pieces have primarily focused around communications, with satellites and fiber optics just some of the subject material from our earlier pieces. Today we’ll continue that trend by look at the early stages of mobile phone development prior to smartphones becoming the next big thing. The Early Days While it may come as a surprise to many, the first steps in actual mobile phone development occurred shortly after WW2, when US based AT&T built the first base station and cell units for development purposes. While these devices technically fit the criteria for mobile phones, they were rudimentary technology that in a lot of ways were more radio than phone like. Working off a decentralized network, these bulky early phones were used in localized communication experiments with no way of being integrated into the existing telephone ...

It took a while for bad actors to come on to the scene. While malware and other scams are all but accepted as part of the modern world, it hasn’t always been this way. In the early days of the internet, before smartphones proliferated it was a much calmer place. However it was only a matter of time before we started to see governments, cyber criminals and intelligence agencies begin to leverage computer viruses for their own means. In this article, we’re going to take a quick walk through of some interesting computer viruses that we’ve had to deal with over the years. We’ll look at malware, worms and other interesting attacks and with the motivations for said viruses ranging from everything to free internet to disassembling a nation states nuclear program, it’s safe to say today will be an interesting walk through the history books. 5. Melissa (1999, United States) Melissa was unique for the time, as in the early days the internet was still considered to be a reasonably unknown pl...

Replacing copper with fiber optic cable supercharged our capabilities. In our last What the Tech?! on satellite linking, while we felt we covered the brief on linking, there was some interesting statistics in regards to just how big a leap forward this was for international communications. We wanted to explore that some more as we felt it made for an interesting tale. So in today’s piece we’ll be looking at another great leap forward for communication by looking at Fiber Optic Cables. Fiber, was a much better transmission line, capable of carrying large quantities of data at speeds far superior to the copper cables of old. Explaining where Fiber fits into this journey helps understand the leap ahead these newer technologies provided. Today the world is a spaghetti of interconnected submarine cables. Source: Wikipedia The Beginning: The idea of transmission lines came far ahead of the development of fiber cables, with the first submarine cables laid in the 1850’s. These line...

The first in our multi part series exploring the best Open Source Tools for analysts. We’ve discussed the needs of reliable open source intelligence sources in previous articles. Today we’ll be launching our multi part series OSINT tools, which will focus on some of the best, in browser tools available for open source investigators. We’re going to start by looking at the Live Universal Awareness Map, or LiveUAMap. Lets get to it. What is it? Liveuamap is an internet service that provides real-time information on ongoing conflicts around the world. The service was developed by Ukrainian software engineers Rodion Rozhkovskiy and Oleksandr Bilchenko and has been used to track armed conflicts such as the Syrian civil war, the Yemeni Civil War and the current Russian Invasion of Ukraine. LiveUAmap is valuable information source, as it provides open online access to a complete chronological archive of its site information, enabling viewers to research past events and historical ...

The infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed the power of data-driven sock puppetry. There is no disputing that social media has become an integral part of our lives, help to shape public discourse and influencing opinions. However within the depths of these platforms, things aren’t always as they seem. Sometimes some of the most vocal voices on particular issues may not be within country or in many cases may not even be human! In this blog post, we’ll look into the world of sock puppetry, exploring its motivations, techniques, then touch on some real-life examples, and the consequences it poses to our digital landscape. We’ll also discuss detection methods and offer some tips to protect ourselves from falling prey to sock puppet accounts. What is the Motivation: While an individual or organisations motivation is best analysed on a case by case basis, generally speaking sock puppet accounts serve as tools for manipulation and deception, employed by various individuals and or...

The Fitness Heat Map has betrayed military secrets before. Now Strava information looks to have cost an RU Officer his life. We’re always looking for interesting OSINT based stories, and while our content for the week is ready to go, this story was so bizarre it simply couldn’t go unnoticed. In today’s article, we’ll be looking at bad OPSEC paired with good OSINT that appears to have lead to the assassination of a Russian Submarine Commander. Let’s get to it. The first rumblings about this event occurred on Telegram, and it took a few hours for things to filter through and information to unfold. Eventually however we saw this article linked to the event via mainstream news. Russian commander killed while jogging may have been tracked on Strava app | CNN A Russian submarine commander shot to death while jogging on Monday may have been targeted by an assailant tracking him… edition.cnn.comD It’s worth mentioning that the NATO summit at Vilnius was underway as this information wa...

A reputation speaks volumes without saying anything at all. We blog because we love writing. But what we love even more than that is making complex things simpler for those new to cybersecurity and online safety. Because we feel that everyone should have access to tools that makes the online world safer, and easier to access and secure. We also think scammers are the butt end of society, and that everyday people should have the resources to accurately determine if they are being scammed, cat fished or the like. So with that said, in today’s article we’ll be having a look at some OSINT tools to assist us with examining email and domain reputations. Whilst Domain Reputation analysis can be considered a form of OSINT, the act of assessing a domain reputation would once be considered a niche interest, mostly being used by cyber professionals, marketers and the like. However now Reputations can give us plenty of insight in to the past actions of an address, and can even give us some...

When you’re using open source intelligence the ability to obtain and analyse information is key to achieving your goals. The correct tools will help you streamline this process, giving you the ability to delve deeper in to your open source investigations in a faster, more efficient way. In this article, we’re going to take a quick look at 5 tools that we regularly use to streamline our investigations and extract information that is pertinent to the target of our investigations. While we may have mentioned one or two of these at points in previous articles, it’s because for the most part they are very effective when used properly. Maltego: Visualizing Data Maltego is a unique tool, as it enables investigators to visualize data obtained via search. Given that most investigations function around being able to use that data and show it effectively, Maltego has a place in every investigative toolkit. While the learning curve can be a little step for those that haven’t used it before, it’...