Hello reader! Today’s blog is a little on the long side, but I assure you that you might learn something new with me today. I hit a couple of roadblocks and infinite loops that tested my patience and creativity. Each obstacle seemed more daunting than the last, and I often found myself questioning whether I would ever find a way to overcome them.
In fact, there was a moment when I thought I had the solution all figured out but let it go due to lack of resources in my toolbox. This missing tool, once discovered, transformed my understanding and approach, enabling me to see paths I had previously overlooked. It serves as a reminder that sometimes the solutions we seek are just a resource away, and it’s essential to stay curious and open-minded in our learning process.
Exercise #011
Task:
The photo below depicts four individuals.
Your task is to identify them all.
A reverse image search took me to this article. The image was a perfect match, and right underneath it reads “UNSMIL | Signing of the Libyan Political Agreement in Skhirat, Morocco, 17 December 2015.” See screenshot below.
Upon further inspecting the UNSMIL website, it seems like they report on different types of events in Libya. My curiosity led me to X (formerly Twitter) and I found the photoset 1, 2, and 3. Below are screenshots of photoset 2 and 3 where we can have a better peek at some of the other faces.
The following two pictures I believe to be of the man in the back with glasses, and the second image must be of the black gentleman.
Then I tried this generic Google Dork to see if I found any more results of the events: site:https://unsmil.unmissions.org Skhirat, and below are some of the results.
I opened the one with the matching red book to see if I could find the names of the people who had signed. When I opened the link, I quickly realized it would not be an easy task and decided to look at the other available images. I found the man seen in the screenshot below, with glasses and matching hair color, beard, and eyebrow color.
I saved the image and did another reverse image search and found this other article.
You can see above that the image is an exact match, but this time it says the name of the man seen in the picture—Mustafa Abushagur.
Our next subject from our findings on X platform is the black gentleman. I started with another Google Dork but used Getty Images this time since I saw a few of those in the results from before, and it came in handy during our previous exercise.
site:https://www.gettyimages.co.uk Skhirat 2015
Once I opened the Getty Images link, I found two out of our three remaining subjects to the left and right in the picture below.
Doing a reverse image search did not give me any useful results. I decided to search for “Libyan Political Agreement signed” and found a different article that contains a picture of our subject from 2018 and names him Saleh Hamah.
The last two subjects took me a long time to find. I got stuck very badly trying to find a perfect match that seemed impossible to find. Here are all the pictures I found of who I thought to be my third subject.
Believe me when I tell you I tried over and over to use these images for reverse image searches, and it took me nowhere. This is when I went back to my previous idea of checking the red book we can see him signing in the top left picture.
Up to this point, I had never had to use Google Lens to highlight text in a picture and see results, so I wasn’t aware of this capability. It turned out I could have finished this exercise a long time ago if I had known about this before.
He was signing at the bottom of the right page, so this is where I started. On my third attempt, I found a name—Fadil Mohamed Al-Amin—and added Libya to it for context. Below are the results I found.
I was looking for hair on the sides, and with the first result, I almost missed it, but the second picture seemed to be the same person and matched the hair and skin color. If it wasn’t for the name showing up on the Skhirat Agreement, I would probably have never found him.
Now I only needed to find the main subject of the image that can be seen signing. He is right-handed, and his eyes are looking to the right, so I assume his name must be on the same page I was just looking at and continue with my Google Lens search.
I did not find him on either page… but some of the signatures did not provide any names, so I decided to find a different picture with better quality that may reveal the missing names. I found this X post.
When I was stuck trying to find my last two persons, I found a YouTube video that had a matching tie for the main subject. I was sure this was him, but could not find his name.
Using Google Lens on the picture from X, I saw these results that looked very similar to the man in the screenshot above, especially in the one I highlighted.
Thanks to this I was able to find the fourth and final subject from the challenge: Muhammad Saad Amaazab.
Task:
The photo below depicts four individuals.
Your task is to identify them all:
- Mustafa Abushagur
- Saleh Hammah
- Fadil Mohamed Al-Amin
- Muhammad Saad Amaazab
This has been the most difficult challenge I have solved to this date. It feels like I really pushed my limits with this exercise.
Something I didn’t mention is that some of the articles I used to double check my findings were written in Arabic and had to translate them to English. This experience not only highlighted the challenges of language barriers but also emphasized the importance of engaging with diverse sources of information.
I hope you enjoyed this blog. Even though I was eager to solve it and be done with it, I enjoyed learning something new and experiencing some kind of roadblock during my investigation. I might even start timing myself for future exercises just to give you an idea of how long it took me to solve it.
As we wrap up this exercise, I look forward to continuing our journey together with more engaging challenges in future posts. I hope you’ll join me for the next one!
Resources
- https://gralhix.com/list-of-osint-exercises/osint-exercise-011/
- https://news.un.org/en/story/2015/12/518952
- https://x.com/hashtag/LibyanPoliticalAgreement?src=hashtag_click
- https://unsmil.unmissions.org/libyan-dialogue-participants-initial-libyan-political-agreeement-skhirat-morocco-11072015
- https://libyaherald.com/2015/07/skhirat-draft-initialled-gnc-left-aside/
- https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/libyas-tobruk-based-governments-representative-muhammed-news-photo/501761010
- https://libyaherald.com/2018/08/tuaregs-will-not-be-used-by-saif-qaddafi-as-a-means-to-political-goals-hor-member-hammah/
- https://www.facebook.com/libyanexpressnews/posts/a-member-of-the-libyan-political-dialogue-forum-lpdf-fadel-al-ameen-stated-holdi/4446133318840102/
- https://x.com/218tv/status/778632651699871744
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM_P1peMT0k
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