Dark Web Images Pinpoint Bad Actors
October 7, 2016
Those Harvard students. I thought most of them drank latte and argued about Henry David Thoreau. Wrong.
I read “No Matter How Smart They Are, Criminals Always Leave Some Trace Behind.” I won’t make a big deal about the “always.” The write up points out that Dark Web images, like any other type of digital image, can contain information referenced by those in the know as “EXIF.”
The acronym means Exchangeable Image File Format. According to the write up:
Harvard students, Paul Lisker and Michael Rose, collected more than 223,471 unique images from the underground illegal markets and found 229 images with geolocation data.
Yep, I know that this represents about one percent of the image sample pool. Remember that “always.” Well, there is a reason categorical affirmatives can be logical tripwires.
The write up points out that the intrepid wizards identified GPS coordinates and the Dark Web markets with which the images were associated. Here’s a map produced by the industrious students:
The write up does not provide any information about companies which have this type of capability in their commercial products.
Stephen E Arnold, October 7, 2016
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