Digital Forensics Tips

Between multiple accounts, nicknames and fake names, an individual performing OSINT will often find themselves looking at two pictures and wondering, “Is this the same person?” Sometimes it’s obvious that it is or isn’t the same individual, but it’s not always easy. When uncertainty is high, it would be fantastic to have an unbiased algorithm examine the faces and give a similarity score. I set off to see if I could configure a generic “black box” solution that I could point at a directory of images, and have it tell me which ones were of the same individual. The first thing I needed to find was a robust facial recognition solution.  I found OpenFace ( http://cmusatyalab.github.io/openface/ ) which is an open source facial recognition engine developed at Carnegie Mellon.  Its python based and uses several external libraries to detect the face, adjust it for comparison and utilizes deep neural networks for analysis. That’s worth 10 points in buzzword bingo!! Since there are so many depe