Gary Ruddell started a series of OSINT challenges that he will publish on his LinkedIn page. This is my writeup of the first challenge.
Table of Contents
The challenge
The Photo
My process
This was a fairly easy challenge, a good starting point for this series. A big hint was given by Gary Ruddell in the post, mentioning “Netherlands,” so I thought that was probably the place where it was taken. Or at the very least, it could be a hint providing a starting point for some kind of treasure hunt.
I started to take notes of the points of interest of this photo:
- A seafront, or at very least, the side of a large lake
- Several wind turbines (six, apparently)
- Some kind of factory on the background (possibly a power station considering the wind turbines nearby, but probably additional factories are nearby)
- That small red metal “thingy” on the right side, placed on a characteristically T-shaped walkway
- A flag on the right
- The sky had several shapes that resembled airplanes trails
- Strange pattern of rocks/concrete on the shore near the walkway
First of all, there wasn’t a big chance to find useful information on the exif data of the pictures, as nowadays social networks tend to remove GPS and other data when you post something online.
First thing I did was to search on Google Images and Yandex Images to see if there was any similar photos that was taken in the same area.
Google Images showed some interesting pictures, fairly similar to the one posted by Mr. Ruddell, taken in the Rotterdam and Groningen port areas. That further confirmed my suspicion about the Netherlands.
The flag in the picture looked like the Netherlands flag too, but I coudn’t confirm the colors of the flag in the photo, so seeing that Google Images mainly pointed to Netherlands pictures was another good point.
Example pictures of the Rotterdam port (credits to iStock / BerndBrueggemann ):
and this one (credits: janssenkruseproductions ):
I looked a bit at the Rotterdam port area with the wind turbines, but I realised that it wasn’t the same place as the photo. The geography wasn’t right (even if it was fairly similar, being a port with the wind turbines and the canal):
But looking from an angle similar to the one in the challenge photo, I confirmed that it wasn’t the Rotterdam port.
I’ve quickly looked at Eemshaven Groningen too, but that wasn’t the right place:
To narrow down the places I resorted to some Google Fu using queries like:
- netherlands wind turbines -Rotterdam
- netherlands wind turbines port -Rotterdam
- netherlands wind turbines port -Rotterdam -Groningen
Which pointed to the Amsterdam port.
The disposition of the points of interest seemed right:
Details of the walkway and the patterned shore:
And then I confirmed I’ve found the place:
BINGPOT!
The original photo was probably taken from an upperd deck of a boat as the vantage point of the photo is fairly high, and the buildings in the southern part of the port don’t seem to be at the right angle, as well as the metal tower doesn’t seem to be in the right place / right angle.
The other shore in the southern part of the port seems to be at the right angle, but Google Maps doesn’t show buildings there (the Street View photo was updated on Nov 2022, so a building could actually be there now):
Other correspondences where the T-shaped walkway coming from the isle on the right side of the port, the strange pattern of concrete on that isle shore, the trails in the sky (there’s the Amsterdam airport not too distant that’s fairly active), the factories, the flag.
So the place is the Port of Amsterdam, the photo was taken either from a boat navigating the port (like the one below), some kind of building that has been recently built in the southern part of that port area, or potentially a drone.
Nice challenge this one!
