Finding Location Of Images Using Metadata (OSINT)
Today I will be introducing a tool that extracts metadata, metadata provides information about digital data almost like the data about data. Extracting metadata from pictures can be very powerful, it can help with identification and copyright protection but what makes metadata so important for cybersecurity learners like us is the ability to extract the location of where the image was taken. This kind of data can easily help with any law enforcement investigations if you were part of a digital forensics team. The tool that helps us achieve this is called ExifTool let me show you how to get started. Firstly open up your terminal and type in.
git clone https://github.com/exiftool/exiftool.gitNow we need to install the additional packages.
sudo apt-get install libimage-exiftool-perlI decided to challenge myself and try to figure out the location and name of the place using these two different images.
Let’s start with the first image, to find metadata of the image overall you can put in
exiftool <filename>To find the location specifically you can type in
exiftool <filename> | grep GPSWhen I put this in for the first image this was the result.
Now we go to
and enter the latitude and longitude information we received in the DMS section.
When putting the exact latitude and longitude in Google Maps you can see the building (Église Saint-Rémi).
Let’s do the same thing for the second image.
When putting this in Google Maps we see that this is taken near the Metro Rogier.
Overall this tool is great for extracting metadata and finding locations of where certain pictures were taken, you can mess around and try out different images yourself but remember sometimes devices have the GPS option turned off for pictures taken. If you enjoyed this article leave a clap or a follow and happy hacking!