This method works as of 8/25/21 OpenCPN is chart plotter navigation software designed for charting a course and tracking your position on a boat straight from your own device. For my purposes, I installed OpenCPN to track vessels and learn how to research and manipulate AIS. …

The key component to performing maritime research is tracking a vessel’s AIS (Automatic Identification System). This allows you to see the vessel’s broadcasted name, location, destination, vessel type, and more! …

Forming a team might be one of the most important aspects of participating in the Trace Labs OSINT Search Party event. A team that works seamlessly in tandem while also communicating openly is key to winning the Black Badge and providing the best intel for Law Enforcement. In this blog…

On Wednesday, June 23, 2021, news began circulating of warning shots being fired at a Royal Navy warship. The claim was that Russia had fired the warning as the warship neared the Crimean Peninsula. The Russian defense agency went on to claim that a warplane dropped four bombs in the…

Rail may be a less exciting form of transportation for some but in fact, trains are incredibly integral to the supply chain. Freight railroads moved roughly14.5 million intermodal (from ship straight to rail for example) shipping containers in 2018 and these transports accounted for nearly a quarter of all U.S…

Monitoring ships and OSINT sources for anomalous patterns may lead you to vessels that are violating sanctions, smuggling drugs, trafficking humans, performing navy maneuvers, and engaging in illegal fishing. Understanding the pattern of life within maritime activity will enrich your data collection and overall investigation. It can be tricky to…

Why is port analysis important to us as OSINT Analysts? There is an increasing need for the overall surveillance and analysis of maritime ports due to the increase in global trade, smuggling of goods/people, COVID tracing and medicine transport, terrorism, and shipbuilding/breaking. …

FOCA, which stands for (Fingerprinting Organizations with Collected Archives) is a pretty nifty tool I use for collecting documents from a target domain and analyzing metadata found within them. Some may argue there are other tools that do this better, and that may very well be true. However, I like…

As an analyst, using points of reference in the surroundings of a photo is not a new concept. Verifying a photo or video often comes down to tracking down city skylines, mountain/land horizons, and street names. …