Hey, investigators!
I am so glad to be back and share new content with you.In today’s blog, I will write about another spontaneous OSINT/GEOINT challenge I performed, during which I had to find an image's exact geolocation.
This challenge was posted by UnShelledSec, an all-source intelligence analyst and the co-founder of HACKTORIA , on his X profile. As you already know, I couldn’t resist taking on the OSINT challenge; it’s just not my nature to let things go without digging deeper. To begin, I carefully analyzed the posted image to gather my first impressions of the background, objects, and overall atmosphere. My objective was to identify any clues that might help pinpoint the exact geolocation of the challenge image.
In the red marking, we can see street art, which will be our main focus. Additionally, there is a large main road (highway) highlighted in pink. In green, high mountains are visible on the horizon, with palm trees lining the road, suggesting a tropical location. We also observe white-on-black and black-on-yellow license plates, which may provide clues about the geographic location. Furthermore, there is a road sign that reads ‘KEEP CLEAR’ in English, indicating that this is an official English-speaking country. Additionally, we can clearly see the road’s line pattern, which consists of white sidelines and a yellow center line.
I used a great tool that I usually use in my investigations called — GeoHint.
You can find different hints about geolocation patterns of pretty much everything, super recommended!
Accordingly, the yellow center line is common in some European countries, but it is especially prevalent in North America and nearby islands.
My initial step was to use Google Lens, which I find excellent for situations like this when you want to identify street art, for example.
However, there’s a catch with image searches on Google; sometimes they return a number of unrelated or similar-looking places. For instance, in my case, it showed potential tropical matches in locations like Puerto Rico and Mauritius. To refine your search results, I suggest experimenting with different objects in the image to get the most relevant results possible — so, I focused on the wall graffiti to find the same pattern and drawing.
I found two matches of the same wall with windows above.
Unfortunately, the first LinkedIn result showed the exact graffiti, but the link led to a completely different post.
So I decided to use some Google dorking to find the post where the graffiti appears. I tried so search for results that are painted on the wall and I found the same wall and zoomed in to try to identify the author of the painting. It appears to be connected to the other two paintings, as all of them are created by ‘Protected Natural Assets’ and share a similar pattern, in my opinion.
Another interesting detail I noticed is that the author seems to emphasise certain objects in the graffiti, which might provide clues about the location. We can clearly see mountains, a river, and many rooted trees, contributing to a tropical vibe.
While searching on Google with various word combinations such as
“river” AND “roots” AND “tropical” in one query, I came across a Pinterest post with clues about the location. It appears to be Dominica, and the hashtags include ‘Indian River’ and ‘Portsmouth’.
Well, thats a big progression!
Remember the Google image search? It mentioned ‘Dominica’ as well, so I will refocus my investigation on that specific location.
I threw my thoughts to ChatGPT and asked to help me with matching this location with the license plates from the original picture, and it really indicates with a high severity that this is the pattern we saw in the pictures.
And also used this great website/tool http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/.
World License Plates is a comprehensive online database showcasing vehicle registration plates from around the world. It provides images and details about:
• Plate Designs: Examples of license plates from various countries and regions.
• Formats and Regulations: Information on plate sizes, colors, and formats.
• Historical Changes: Details on how plate designs and rules have evolved.
• Regional Variations: Insights into differences in plate designs within a country.
It indeed matches the license plates I observed in the challenge picture.
Here’s another useful map I found on the GeoGuessr community on Reddit, which shows the matching black-and-white plate patterns in the island area.
This made me focus more on Dominica, whish is a Caribbean island, was the last to be colonized due to strong resistance from the native Caribs. It was ceded by France to Britain in 1763 and remained a British colony until gaining independence in 1978. The island, covering 751 sq km, has a tropical climate with heavy rainfall and a population of 74,661. English is the official language and French in some places.
I entered both locations from the Pinterest post into Google Maps to pinpoint the precise area to focus on. Although it might require extensive map exploration, I found that Indian River and Portsmouth are only 1.7 km apart, which is great news — less area to investigate.
At this point, I remembered the long, straight main road in the challenge picture. Considering that a small island typically wouldn’t have many straight roads due to its curves and mountains, I decided to focus on searching for main roads and highways on the island.
I found a road network map of the island from 2018, which wasn’t too difficult given the island’s relatively small size.
According to the map, the red lines indicate the primary roads. We can see many curved roads that surround the island and pass through the mountains, as shown on the terrain map.But our focus remains on the Indian River and Portsmouth area, right?
Boom! I found two straight main roads (in the green circle) on the entire island, and they are very close to the locations we’re investigating.
So now we have two main roads to consider. However, based on the challenge picture, there were mountains in the background, not water. This means we should exclude the more southern road since it doesn’t match the features we observed. The potential mountains we saw in the original challenge picture are highlighted in yellow. So we will focus on the road that goes through Portsmouth.
The road is named ‘Ross Blvd,’ and it stretches approximately 3 km in length.
One drawback is that the area lacks street view, making it difficult to visually explore the location. However, there are photo sphere locations uploaded by users that might be helpful.
It took me about 10 minutes to explore the photo spheres, but I found the exact location. It matches the road pattern and the ‘KEEP CLEAR’ sign. There’s a blank wall next to the building (with a different colors) from the original challenge picture — because the Google image is outdated, the graffiti isn’t visible yet.
I also searched for QR codes, as I noticed one on the wall, thinking it might be a popular tourist location. I found a local website showcasing various spots where tourists can scan QR codes to get information about the area.I Google queried the following:
"QR" AND "dominica" AND "graffiti"
Here’s another view of the location I found, with the high mountains surrounding in the background, one of them is called Morne aux Diables.
I also managed to locate the exact wall and building by doing some ‘dumpster diving’ on YouTube videos covering this area and a medical university near the location.
The exact geolocation of the OSINT challenge picture —
HG4R+HQ4, Ross Blvd, Portsmouth, Dominica. 15.563302,-61.454115
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