1 Dr Stephen Hill Finding & Investigating Digital Footprints with Open Source Intelligence Workshop The Web Explained Search Engines ▪ To be truly effective at online research and investigation, it is important to understand the unique and combined qualities of each search engine and to use them effectively in conjunction with each other…
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1
Dr Stephen Hill
Finding & Investigating
Digital Footprints with
Open Source Intelligence
Workshop
The Web Explained
Search Engines
▪ To be truly effective at online research andinvestigation, it is important to understand theunique and combined qualities of each searchengine and to use them effectively in conjunctionwith each other…
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Search Engines (Index)
▪ Search engines are "engines" or "robots" that crawl the weblooking for new web pages
▪ These robots read the web pages and put the text (or partsof the text) into a large database or index that you can thenaccess…
▪ Google - https://www.google.co.uk
▪ Bing - http://www.bing.com
▪ Yahoo - https://uk.yahoo.com
▪ Yandex - https://www.yandex.com
Index Search Explained
▪ Page A and Page B have equivalent location and frequency of
keywords; however
▪ Page A has 20 external webpages linking to it and Page B
has 40
▪ Based on the implication that Page B is more popular, it
would achieve a higher page ranking within Google and
Bing’s search results than Page A
▪ This information is significant to investigators as many of the
webpages sought may be “hidden” or purposely forced to be
“unpopular” by the owner due to the nature or intention of the
site…
Point to Remember!
This presents a challenge when using Google and Bing
as both of these search engines focus on presenting the
most popular pages at the top of their search results
When using these search engines, it may be necessary
to locate the least popular sites within millions of search
▪ Remember words are can be spelt differently orthere may be a misspelt word or typo on thewebsite you are looking for hence why somesearch engines fail to find the word/phrase
▪ Consider spelling and typo’s
▪ Tyres & Tires, colour & color
▪ Stephen Hill, Steven Hill, Steve Hill
▪ Serach Engine, Fraud Invesdigation...
Wildcards *
In most search engines and directories, a search for
▪ Every time you surf the Internet, your IP addressis publicly visible to everyone on target networkresources
▪ It is important therefore not to leave a digitalfootprint...
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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http://www.fakenamegenerator.com
Disguising Your Online ID
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 usingthe proxy server settings
A VPN encrypts all of your traffic
▪ VPN’s replace your ISP and route all traffic through the VPNserver, including all programs and applications...
TOR
https://www.torproject.org
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TOR
“Tor protects you by bouncing your communications arounda distributed network of relays run by volunteers all aroundthe world:
It prevents somebody watching your Internet connectionfrom learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sitesyou visit from learning your physical location.
Tor works with many of your existing applications, includingweb browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, andother applications based on the TCP protocol”.
Who is using Tor?
▪ Normal people (e.g. protect their browsing records)
▪ Militaries (e.g. military field agents)
▪ Journalists and their audiences
(e.g. citizen journalists encouraging social change)
▪ Law enforcement officers (e.g. for online “undercover” operations)
▪ Activists and Whistleblowers (e.g. avoid persecution while still raising a voice)
▪ Bloggers
▪ IT professionals (e.g. during development and operational testing, access
internet resources while leaving security policies in place)
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Tor Project
Some of the software and services under the Tor project umbrella:
▪ Torbutton
▪ Tor Browser Bundle
▪ Vidalia
▪ Orbot
▪ Tails
▪ Onionoo
▪ Metrics Portal
▪ Tor Cloud
▪ Shadow
▪ Tor2web…
Tails
https://tails.boum.org
TOR to Web
https://tor2web.org
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VPN Options
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com
How Safe is your Browser?
https://panopticlick.eff.org
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Public Vote on Secure Browser
Source: Sensors Tech Forum (http://sensorstechforum.com)
The users voted that the most secure browsers are: