Michael Bazzell’s most recent book, OSINT Techniques – Resources for Uncovering Online Information – 11th Edition (2024), offers a plethora of techniques for enhancing the effectiveness of human trafficking (HT) investigations. Bazzell’s website details 11th Edition changes, the Table of Contents, and has a purchase link. Updates include custom search tools, Linux scripts to build virtual machines, detailed cheat-sheets to simplify processes, and a single Linux command to build a complete OSINT VM with every tool in the entire book. The following examples are flagged specifically for HT.
Add-On to Copy Selected Links
While viewing website ad results for suspected HT victims, Bazzell explains how to copy all active hyperlinks and paste them directly into a report, email, or memo for other investigators (pgs 78-79).
Useful Subreddit
The What Is This Thing (r/whatisthisthing) subreddit is recommended as a useful place where you can post a digital photo of practically anything and someone will know exactly what it is while providing detailed and cited additional information, e.g. tattoos, etc (pgs 278-279).
Tinder
Bazzell provides examples of how to use Tinder to track posted profiles to locate trafficking victims and/or to identify buyers on the demand side (pgs 281-283).
Suspicious Websites
A list of 19 suspicious websites that aid in online trafficking is provided. Bazzell explains how to use these websites to discover and investigate victim identifiers (pg 286).
Image Content
Bazzell details how to use the Wolfram Image Identification Project service to conduct a reverse image searches to support victim identification, identify trafficking areas, selectors associated with both traffickers and victims, and approximate dates of activities (pg 361).
Reverse Video Searching
HT investigators can now reverse search videos posted to escort providers. The presence of identical videos posted to numerous geographical areas will highlight the travel and intentions of the pimps that are broadcasting the details. Bazzell provides several techniques and a Videos Search Tool to exploit videos and live streaming (pgs 379-390).
Breach Data
Bazzell identifies public resources which link to breach data without attribution of a specific originating source to enable its legal and ethical use. He emphasizes the value of breach data in investigations of all types. He details several techniques to exploit breach data to discover additional email addresses, associated credentials, etc. He discusses ways to use OSINT to find additional breach data. One example cited includes an HT forum with data on traffickers, victims, and buyers (Chapter 41 beginning on pg 495).
OSINT
Numerous OSINT resources, techniques, and tools for HT and other practitioners are provided. A representative sampling:
Umbrella File Type Search: An umbrella search string is provided to search on OSINT by all file types (pg 345).
Amazon Web Services: 260 PDF files via ext operator and OSINT (pg 347).
Amazon CloudFront: 129 results for OSINT (pg 347).
Presentation Repositories: Five examples are provided which produce numerous results for OSINT via site search operator (pg 348).
Paste Sites: 43 examples are provided (Pastebin being the most popular) which produce numerous results for OSINT via site search operator (pgs 349-350).
Social Media Images: Provides sample queries for all images associated with OSINT on various social media sites which can be modified for humantrafficking, etc (pg 362).
Social Media Videos: Provides sample queries for videos associated with OSINT on various social media sites which can be modified for humantrafficking, etc (pg 379).
Historical Domain Registration: Details a technique to identify the owner of a protected domain via various sources of historical domain records (pgs 398-400).
Summary
In summary, Bazzell’s book is a treasure trove of resources for HT investigations that just keeps on giving.
