Solving Fresh Faced | Bellingcat OSINT Challenge Walkthrough #1

Full disclosure: I am a beginner, new to OSINT. I have no formal training beyond a few free courses. Please feel free to point out anything I’ve missed or improvements to my methods! Find the link to this challenge here.

This is my second time attempting a Bellingcat challenge. I loved attempting my first challenge so much that I decided I would formally write up my experience with the next one I did. I’ve written this as a guide to help people who get stuck but don't necessarily just want the answers given to them.

The article outlines the path I actually took to find the answer to this challenge. As a beginner, it can be disheartening to see experienced OSINT analysts outline what seems like a magical, ingenious, intuitive path to obvious answers. For many investigations, including theirs, things are messier. So, I wanted to show my real process, the logic of what I tried to do, and the mistakes and dead-ends I ran into. Why? Because that is where the real value is in attempting challenges like this one. Learning where you went wrong and how you could improve next time.

Before we begin, let’s triage the challenge itself.

Challenge: Fresh Faced - Finding The Founder

Source: Bellingcat/Sofia Santos

Based on the challenge brief, we can discern the who, when, and what we are looking for:

• Who: Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat
• When: 2013
• What: Newspaper Article & YouTube Footage

We also have the caption: Bloger Eliot Higgins svaki dan pregledava nove snimke written in a foreign language below the screenshot.

Let's begin!

Investigation Summary

If you’re using these challenges to learn OSINT like I am, you should keep a record of your investigation. This will give you an evidence base to share with collaborators, draw conclusions from, keep for future reference, and identify your blind-spots for the next investigation or challenge you attempt.

Throughout this challenge, I used a modified investigation plan derived in part from the Basel Institute on Governance's Open-source Intelligence eLearning course. You can see my filled out plan here to see exactly what I recorded, and access the template for your own use here (click File > Make a Copy or File > Download).

From here on, I have spoiler guards on critical details. I really recommend you give each step a good attempt before revealing the key information. However, if you've finished the challenge yourself or simply want to see everything, you can click the button in the bottom-left of the screen to toggle on/off all spoiler protection. If you leave it on, individual spoiler guards will disappear when clicked → (just like that).

To get the most out of this walkthrough, I recommend following each step using the tools and sources provided below. It's a relatively simple challenge from a technical standpoint, but these are fundamental OSINT skills to practice and become familiar with.

Investigation Stages

• Cheap & lazy searches
• Find the caption language to uncover the newspaper article
• Search for publisher's YouTube channel and video
• Search for journalist's YouTube channel and video
• Verify video

Tools Used

• Google Search
• X/Twitter Advanced Search
• Google Translate
• Google Reverse Image Search (Google Lens)
• YouTube Channel Search

Sources Used

• Wikipedia
• YouTube
• Vecernji List

My Path & Thought Process

My path to the answer for this challenge consisted of 14 individual steps. I've divided them up into 5 investigation stages.

Stage 1: Cheap & lazy searches

Strangely enough, I didn't realise that these first two steps were related until writing up this walkthrough. Unconsciously, I tried the easiest, laziest methods first. No need for specialised information, just simple matching of images or text.

1. Reverse Google image search

Result: None - the only match was the image from the Bellingcat challenge site itself.

2. Search Google for image caption

Result: None - a single match was found linking to another walkthrough article for this challenge.

Stage 2: Find the caption language to uncover the newspaper article

Thankfully, the challenge's author had the decency to provide a clue which helps us eliminate over 99% of the internet. Limiting our searches to results from countries which use the language in the caption will likely be the most powerful filter we have access to.

3. Find the language of the image caption

4. Look up the country codes for the countries which use the language

5. Use the ccTLD to search for sites mentioning Eliot Higgins

Stage 3: Search for publisher's YouTube channel and video

6. Translate article to English and search for a reference to a YouTube video or link

Result: None - there is no mention of a YouTube video or link in the article

7. Search for publisher YouTube channel

Result: There is a channel called Vecernji list on YouTube with the same logo as the outlet website.

8. Search videos from publisher channel for Eliot Higgins

Result: None - There were no videos listed when searching for Eliot Higgins.

9. Search for video published by the publisher around the same date as the article was published: April 2, 2013

Result: The oldest video on the channel is June 4, 2014, and the channel was listed in November 2013

10. Search the publisher's X/Twitter to see if they posted a link to a YouTube video around the article date

Result: Confirmed Vecernji list have been on X/Twitter since 2009, but no relevant tweet or link

11. Look for name changes of the publisher

Stage 4: Search for journalist's YouTube channel and video

12. Find the journalist's YouTube channel

Result: Found a channel with the same name using the handle @krasnec. Listed as a "Journalist from Croatia working ... for Vecernji List"

13. Search journalist's YouTube channel for "Eliot Higgins"

Stage 5: Verify video as primary source of footage

14. Watch YouTube video to confirm location, angle of screenshots etc

Conclusion

The video of the interview is listed on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7qd4Y6QAfY. Therefore, the answer for the challenge is: k7qd4Y6QAfY

Reflections

I learnt a lot from this challenge. As I alluded to at the beginning, I think the most valuable lessons are learnt through the experience of trying and failing. So, here’s three lessons I learnt from doing it the hard way.

Lesson 1. Always confirm your findings as best you can

One of the things I realised was that in the real world there is no input box that tells you when you get the answer right. Instead, you have to build that evidence for yourself.

In a toy example like this challenge, you are often rewarded with clear feedback. For example, the thumbnail used for the article and the video matched the screenshot provided.

Admittedly, I didn’t consider this until aspect of an investigation until I was writing up this walkthrough. I saw the final video thumbnail, clicked on it, input the code and voila, I was right. That’s the difference between toy and real examples. The toy example answer is known and easily verifiable.

Accepting incorrect and un-supported findings and conclusions as fact can be detrimental to a real investigation: missing important information, chasing ill-defined leads, false accusations, etc.

Diligence is key.

Lesson 2. Filtering by date is extremely powerful

I admit that as a language nerd, I probably over-invested in the ability of the language/country dimension to provide a powerful filter.

Another fact that would have similarly eliminated 99% of the internet from our search was the year: 2013. Admittedly, I probably could and should have used filtering by date ranges more effectively in this challenge.

Using Google Search you can limit articles by date ranges (although only in a limited manner in the Advanced Search window). However, using before: and/or after: followed by the date in the format YYYY-MM-DD can be used in searches to restrict results.

In fact, as I wrote up this walkthrough, I decided to try out some date-range-restricted Google searches. Turns out searching “Bloger” AND "Eliot Higgins" before:2014-01-01 after:2013-01-01, covering the entire year of 2013, brings up the correct video as the only result.

Looks like there was one last cheap & lazy search I missed after all...

Lesson 3. Right-click to translate pages with Google Translate (on Chrome)

I did this OSINT challenge using Brave (a Chromium browser) which had an automatic pop-up in the search bar when a translation of a page could be made. I thought that if the Google Translate button didn't come up in the search bar, I wasn't able to translate the page.

I know it's silly but I since discovered that one can right-click and select "Translate to English" anywhere on any page.

Not realising this made me scroll through nearly 50 tweets in Croatian before realising I could translate the entire X/Twitter feed. Maybe this tip is not useful for anyone else, but for me, important lesson.

Fin

If you made it this far, thank you for reading. I hope this walkthrough helped get you unstuck or gave you some ideas as to you how you might try to tackle the next challenge on your own.

This is the first time I've done a write up like this so I'd really appreciate any feedback or comments from anyone reading. You can find me on X/Twitter, Bluesky, and LinkedIn at the handle @rgmarchant. I'd love to hear from you, especially if you found the answer a completely different way to me. Please let me know!

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