Welcome to the 9th OSINT Exercise. This challenge helped me see the light at the end of the tunnel (pun intended). Join me to see how I used the sun to determine the time of recording and geolocate a post from Eriseld Myrto. Let’s get started.
OSINT Exercise #009
Task briefing:
The video below was shared by the Visit Tirana Twitter account on February 16, 2023.
Please answer the following questions:
a) To the best of your knowledge, at what time was the video recorded?
b) Find the coordinates of where the person was walking at the time of the recording.
Above is a screenshot of the video, but the original post can be found here. The post gave us the general location: Tirana, Albania. I looked at the video a couple of times, trying to identify things that were unique and could help me get a closer location.
The first thing I noticed was the big building on the right, but I could not see any visible names on the side or the rooftop.
I immediately changed my focus to the green signs on the left. I thought I could see a green cross, and it made me think of pharmacies. Below is an example of the pharmacy sign I thought I had seen.
The sign was very similar, and the crane gave me a false sense of security that I found the right place, but none of that helped me get to the correct location.
I felt so close to the answer that I could not stop searching. I went back to the video and noticed the light post had three housings. This could also help me make sure I had the right location.
At this point I decided to search for bike lanes in Tirana that were in between two roads with the same kind of light posts. Below are some of my results from Google.
I highlighted in screenshot above with red the light posts and used blue for the middle lane. Even the trees were very similar. The picture said this was on Kavaja Street. I went to Google Earth and started looking at the street until I saw a match for the big building I had first seen.
Using the street view, I was able to confirm I had the right place. You can see above in red from left to right the same light post, the same squared rooftop, and the big building on the right.
Then, in green from left to right, the same tree and round street sign, another street sign but rectangular, and the green signs from the pharmacy.
I only need to determine at what time the video was recorded. Having read the question and seen the video, my mind immediately went to SunCalc. I have not had the chance to use this tool until now.
I input the date from the post and used the coordinates I had found into SunCalc. Then, I aligned the sun using the top center bar to the position I thought was closest to what was seen in the video. Based on this, you can see in the screenshot below that the time was around 16:50 UTC.
Tasks:
a. To the best of your knowledge, at what time was the video recorded?
b. Find the coordinates of where the person was walking at the time of the recording.
Solutions:
a. Around 16:50 UTC
b. Around: 41°19’37.2″N 19°48’26.3″E
Ever since I first heard about SunCalc, I have been waiting for the right opportunity to leverage the tool. This alone has made it so much more fun and entertaining for me. It also makes it unique compared to the other challenges we have solved so far.
If you enjoyed solving this challenge, make sure to stay tuned for more related content. Who knows, we might even find a place based only on the shadows we see in a picture! Thanks for reading.
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