OSINT blog: You Sunk My Battleship
Another pandemic Friday night in, another OSINT challenge to find a mate using GEOINT. In our Discord server we have a channel called 'opsec fail club' where, occassionally, someone will challenge others to geolocate them exactly. It's a fun thing to do when bored and good to practise and refine your OSINT skills.
Starting point:
Using the above image I was able to find where @BigLDP was located exactly. I began with checking for battleships in the US that were musems. I came across USS Intrepid - one of the most visited in the world:
The ship @BigLDP was on was not USS Intrepid, however, but does still look like an Essex-classs aircraft carrier. So I was on the right track. After going through the list of post-war rebuilds I found one that was a museum - USS Lexington aka CV-16 or "The Blue Ghost".
I was able to find the directions and satellite images of USS Lexington and all I need to do now was confirm @BigLDP's exact location.
And in a few steps, it was possible to geolocate the screenshot. Thanks to @BigLDP for the fun OSINT challenge.
Links to the pages in the screenshots:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Intrepid_(CV-11)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Lexington_(CV-16)
- https://maps.sygic.com/?utm_source=content-pages&utm_medium=map&utm_campaign=poi#/?item=poi:16915&map=13,27.77819,-97.318954
- https://usslexington.com/visit/directions-map-how-to-get-to-lex/
- https://www.google.com/maps/@27.8145321,-97.3885619,2a,49.5y,292.22h,106.78t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sF38fKlrUmH4JCNt3TA_MmA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656