So you’re new to the field of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and want to dip your toes into the Kase Scenario offerings? Well this is a great scenario for beginners which is offered totally free! So don’t dilly dally and sign up over at https://kasescenarios.com/osint-training/
Now lets begin..
You’ve heard a rumor that a person by the name of ‘Orkla’ is looking for talented OSINT analysts. After making contact with him he wants to test your skills to see if you have what it takes to help him on his projects. Do you think you’ve got what it takes? We’ll lets find out.
Now that we’ve been introduced it’s time to see what we can do for Orkla.
At this point I’d like to highlight a great feature of these Orkla scenarios. If you get th eanswer wrong don’t despair. By all means keep pushing, researching and digging for that answer as that’s what will make you a great analyst. If however you do get really stuck, Orkla will offer up a hint to help point you in the right direction.
For this question we have a couple of pieces of information that we can pay attention to. We know we’re trying to find a Coca Cola Freestyle machine, so maybe there is a way we can look up location of these machines? We also know that Orkla is currently at The Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta, Georgia. My first step in a situation like this would be to start with a search engine to find any resources that could be related to these points.
Starting with the Coke machines, we could do a straight search in Google to see what comes up?
Google search: “Coca Cola Freestyle machine”
The first result we get back is from Coca Cola itself and is tailored towards Coca-Cola Freestyle. This looks promising.
Clicking on this link takes us to yet another link where we can Find a Location. Well, this combined with the other information from Orkla is exactly what we need. Lets see.
So I literally just typed in “The Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta, Georgia” as the address to search for, and that pinpoints all the locations of Coca-Cola Freestyle machines within a 5 mile radius. If we zoom in on the map, we can clearly see Peachtree Plaza and identify the location Orkla is looking for.
So the name of the restaurant and answer to this question is Firehouse
Well done! That’s a great start and Orkla is happy to have YOU helping with this investigation.
Lets keep going.. we won’t ask how, but Orkla has obtained an audio clip from the Sherlock Holmes Fanclub at Dragon Con 2024 which relates to some sort of meet up.
Have a listen to the audio file and see if you can figure out where they went.
Well this is an interesting one isn’t it? There’s not a lot to go on in here at all.
Sometimes it pays to take a step back and not focus on the specific content, but what we have. Weirdly all we have here is three words.. could this be code for something and if so, what?
Using Google again, we can try to figure out and tools or services that may help us. Lets try with what we know.
Google search: three words code
And look what comes up!
Well this looks interesting. If you’re not aware, What3Words is a geocoding application that uses triples of words instead of alphanumeric coordinates to identify locations. Could this cryptic audio be related. Lets see.
Using the three words we heard in the clip, outgoing.bongo.skip we can see this is located at Trader Vic’s in Georgia.
So the secret meet up location, and answer to this question is Trader Vic’s
You’re making great progress! Moving on, Orkla has a photo for us, and they want to know the name of a statue that’s out of sight to the right of this picture.
So far we know a lot of the activity and locations have been based in Atlanta, Georgia. Using this information can you try to figure out where this photo has been taken, the direction faced and what the statue is called?
We have a number of different things you can use to aid your research. Given we know the city already that’s a great starting point. We can see in the photo a street sign in blue for Baker St and it’s helpful to know that it points NW to the left and NE to the right. We can also tell this is a major intersection with traffic lights and very unique street lamps.
What we also know is this relates to Dragon Con in 2024 so we may be able to find specific routes that this parade took.
Lets see what we can find..
Google Search: Dragon Con Route Atlanta 2024
Filtering by images I was able to see this route map.
Looking at this map, we can see the route intersects baker St NW and Baker St NE along Peachtree St. Cross referencing this with Google maps and streetview, we can confirm that this is likely where this photo was taken, facing north with the intersection just in front of the photographer.
Using Street View we can place ourselves in this exact location and review the presence of any bronze statues to our right.
I moved around a little to try and get a clear view, but these are the only bronze statues I can see on this intersection, to our right.
While we can see them, we can’t see what the name of the statue is from here. What we do know now is that the statues are located outside the Truist Plaza, so lets see what a quick search can tell us.
Google search: Truist Plaza bronze statue
You’ll get a number of results and after reviewing these, I particularly like Flickr for photos, you should be able to identify the name of this sculpture.
So the name of this sculpture and the answer to this question is Ballet Olympia
No time to rest.. while you’re at it, Orkla needs to know who designed this statue?
This one should be pretty easy for you by now. We may have already see the answer in previous research.
In our previous research identifying what this sculpture was, Flickr already gave us this information. Did you see it?
The designer of this sculpture and answer to this question is John Portman
You are doing an amazing job if you have gotten this far. Well done! We’re nearly there and this will be the final request from Orkla. Something a bit different but we need to identify the person in the photo below.
Again, we can use the information that we know and work from there.
Location: Boston Marathon
Race Number: 3543
Timeframe: 2013-2018
Gender: Male
Nationality: Chinese/Hong Kong
Using the basics of what we know as a starting point, let’s try to find information to match more of our data. We’ll start with a very broad search for all Boston Marathon results.
Google search: boston marathon results
This is great, The first result takes us to additional links to all historical races. One of which allows us to search a time frame of 2001 through to 2019.
Well this is perfect. if only search historical records was this easy for everything. From the Boston marathon Archives we are able to fitler of a few things that we currently know. First is the date range for the race, between 2013 and 2018. Next we can specify their country of residence, age range, gender and last but not least.. their bib number.
We do get a number of results back, but only one is from Hong Kong.
So the the answer to this question is Ngai, Peter Yuen Man
Well done. That’s an amazing effort and a great learning experience.
I’m not sure how you came across this scenario, but I would highly recommend checking out some of the other offerings from Kase Scenarios. Chip away at them, learn, but most importantly.. have fun!
Kase Scenarios - Orkla: Bounty Hunt
Welcome to Orkla: Bounty Hunt, an OSINT challenge from Kase Scenarios that pulls you deep into the grey zone of the web. In this scenario, you’ll be piecing together fragments of information, tracing digital breadcrumbs, and scrutinising every detail to get to the heart of who’s behind this shady file [...]| Play | Cover | Release Label |
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