Gralhix OSINT Exercise #007

Unraveling the Tutankhamun Exhibition Mystery

Before we dive in, I’d like to mention that I’m experimenting with a slightly different structure for this post. The aim is to make it both easier to read and write. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this new format in the comments below.

Exercise Challenge

Our task was to analyze a photograph taken a few years ago in a beautiful city and answer the following questions:

a) Where was the photo taken?
b) In which year was the photo taken?
c) The big poster on the right contained a link to a website. What was the link?

Gralhix OSINT Exercise Image #007

Solution Summary

After careful analysis, here are our findings:

• The photo was taken on or in front of the escalators of the Centro Vasco de Gama in Lisbon, Portugal at coordinates 38.767624°, -9.096078°.
• The photo was taken in 2019.
• The poster’s website link was http://www.tutankamon.pt — currently offline — archived at:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190723003713/http://www.tutankamon.pt/

To reach these conclusions, I used a combination of Google reverse image search, image analysis, YouTube search, and Google Street View. The process involved identifying key landmarks, cross-referencing exhibition dates, and verifying information through archived web pages.

Detailed Walkthrough

Initial Image Analysis

The image presents a bustling urban scene that immediately caught my attention. As someone who loves city landscapes, I was drawn to the mix of modern architecture, public art, and the vibrant atmosphere.

Key elements I noticed:

• A large, angular metal sculpture dominates the central area
• Paved areas with distinct pathways for pedestrians and cyclists
• A large banner advertising a “Tutankhamun” exhibition
• Glimpses of water and a distant landmass on the horizon

Geolocation

My first step was a reverse image search, which yielded a crucial lead: Centro Vasco de Gama.

Google Image Search of the exercise image — results of interest highlighted in pink

The standout feature was the enormous sculpture, which I identified as “Homem-Sol” by Portuguese artist Jorge Vieira. Standing over 20 meters tall and weighing more than 13,000 kilograms, it served as an excellent visual anchor for geolocation.

Google Earth Pro Satellite Imagery and Open Street Map highlighting key features. #1 indicates the banner hanging from the building on the right and #2 is the prominent statue in the image’s foreground.

Using Google Street View, I aligned other key details from the original image until I could confidently pinpoint the location: 38.767624°, -9.096078°. The photographer likely stood on or at the top of the escalator at this spot.

Determining the Year

The large exhibition banner provided the key to identifying the year. While the image showed the word “Tutankhamun” and an image of the pharaoh, other text was illegible.

I turned to YouTube, reasoning that such exhibitions often generate substantial marketing content and visitor-created videos. This intuition paid off:

Interestingly, the search revealed two different dates: the exhibit came to Lisbon in both 2017 and 2019. To determine which was relevant to our image, I zoomed in on a YouTube video’s date line: “A PARTIR DE 19 DE ABRIL DE 2019”

This strongly matches the line with yellow text visible on the banner in the original image. The May 21 date line in the other video is significantly shorter than what is displayed in the excercise image.

Confirming the Website Link

With the year established as 2019, I used Google Street View to get a clearer view of the banner from that period.

This provided the final piece of the puzzle: the URL displayed on the banner was http://www.tutankamon.pt. I verified this using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which confirmed that this web address displayed information for an exhibit at this location in 2017.

Archived at: https://web.archive.org/web/20190723003713/http://www.tutankamon.pt/

Lessons Learned

1. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is an invaluable resource for OSINT investigations. In this case, it helped verify historical web content, providing crucial context to our findings.
2. When geolocating, it’s important to identify and focus on strong, unique anchors like the Homem-Sol sculpture. This approach is far more efficient than getting bogged down in matching numerous minor details.
3. Thinking creatively about information sources can lead to unexpected breakthroughs. In this case, turning to YouTube for exhibition promotions provided key date information that might have been difficult to find elsewhere.
4. Cross-referencing information from multiple sources (Google Earth, Street View, YouTube, archived websites) helps build a more complete and accurate picture.

Further Exploration

An intriguing question arose during this investigation: Is there a way to automate the process of matching an image within a video clip? With the ever-increasing amount of video content available online, manually scouring entire video lengths for relevant frames is time-consuming and inefficient.

Potential areas to research are:

1. Image sampling tools that could extract frames from videos at regular intervals for matching purposes.
2. Integration of existing image recognition APIs with video processing tools for more efficient searching.

These advancements could significantly streamline the OSINT process, especially when dealing with large volumes of video data.

I hope you found this OSINT exercise walkthrough helpful. If you have any questions about the process or suggestions for future investigations, please leave them in the comments below. And don’t forget to share your thoughts on the new post structure — your feedback helps me improve these writeups for everyone in the OSINT community.