Last week, an unknown "hacker" released a copy of a user database from the IronMarch forum, which was an online neo-nazi meeting place until it was shut down. An archive of the public site can be found at https://web.archive.org/web/20170509142136/http://ironmarch.org/. The dumped data includes a full copy of all content, including details such as emails, IP addresses, usernames, and private messages. I decided to dig into it a bit and see what could be gleaned. The original leak has been removed from Pastebin, but several clones appear daily. The following is a redacted version of a few entries.

Four Suited Jack:[email protected]:e0e501f3e4e49d6c67378d9d06763298:?ET\"e
Jamie M:[email protected]:8ecdc4d6401055df380ab007c0c31b5b:t32hj
Ritz:[email protected]:159e7b09066e91fcb15008943d114b6e:vy:I0

This represents the username:email:encrypted password of each user on the forum. My first task was to parse out all of the email addresses. I saved the original leak file as Ironmarch.full.txt and executed the following command in Linux.

grep -E -o "\b[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\b" < Ironmarch.full.txt > Ironmarch.emails.txt

This presented a clean file containing only the email addresses of every user. I then connected to a covert Gmail account, accessed the Contacts, and exported the only contact in this account to a CSV file. This provided the template desired by Google for import. I copied and pasted the entire list of email addresses within this template and gave each of them a unique last name of 1,2,3,etc. This presented a CSV file ready for import. The following is a partial view.

I imported this CSV into my Google Contacts which now tells Google these are my "Friends". I then launched a new Android virtual machine through Genymotion and connected to the covert Google account. This virtual mobile device now associates all of these email addresses with my own address book. I connected to the Facebook app, asked it to "Find Friends, and was immediately presented with numerous Facebook accounts which were associated with the email addresses of the Ironmarch members. Below is an example.

I then repeated this process with Twitter:

and Instagram:

OSINT Lessons Learned:

Breaches and leaks of online forums are very common. Lists of email addresses may identify interesting information about the types of members. However, identifying social network accounts of members of hate groups can be much more revealing. I quickly located numerous personal accounts registered in real names, all from the connection to an email address.

PRIVACY Lessons Learned:

I also identified many accounts which were likely used during covert investigations. When I submitted the email addresses as contacts through a foreign dating network, I observed an account connected to a police cyber-crimes investigator. This is probably due to him using a real address when registering for an account on the forum. This is sloppy, but I have been guilty of this myself many years ago. If you are tasked with investigating online hate groups, or anything else really, be sure to always use a unique email address and password, which will never be used anywhere else. Social networks and other online communities make it very easy to connect accounts with real people.

I have had several members of my online video training ask me about TikTok lately. It is extremely popular with younger users, and investigators should take note. The following is a partial excerpt from the book Open Source Intelligence Techniques, 7th Edition.

TikTok (tiktok.com)

TikTok is a social media video application originally created for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos. Today, it is very similar to Vine, which was shut down in 2016. TikTok allows users to create standard videos of 3 to 15 seconds in length and looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds in length. It is popular globally and was the most downloaded app in the U.S. during various months in 2018. It should not be ignored when investigating younger targets. The data is public, and we need to focus on search, usernames, comments, and acquisition of videos.

TikTok Search: TikTok does not offer any native search options within its pages or profiles. However, third-party resources provide a hashtag search option. I have found TikTokDom (tiktokdom.com) helpful, but prefer TikTokAPI (tiktokapi.ga). Within this page, click on "Hashtag Search" and provide any complete or partial search terms. Searching "osint" provides results of "inosint", "osintamu", and any other hashtags containing the term. If you know your exact hashtag of interest, you can navigate to a direct URL as follows, replacing "test" with your target information.

https://www.tiktok.com/tag/test

TikTok Usernames: TikTokAPI also possesses a username search option which behaves exactly as the hash tag feature. If you know your target’s username, you can navigate directly to the profile with the following URL. Replace "test" with your target’s username.

https://www.tiktok.com/@test

TikTok Comments: Similar to Instagram, users leave comments on the TikTok posts of others. These can be publicly viewed next to the video, but the content is not located within the source code of the profile. You could select all of the text, copy it, and then paste into a report. However, I prefer to use Export Comments (exportcomments.com). Paste your target TikTok video URL into the search field and allow the process to complete. Below is an actual excerpt, which includes the exact usernames, date, time, likes, and comments from the target post.

Name Date Likes Comments
daddy.devito 08/10/19 19:51:24 1 lmao sorry for this
alicetsybulski 08/10/19 21:20:31 1 😂 I hate you Trisha!
barbaquesauce 08/10/19 21:25:24 3 😂😂 He's so weird looking

TikTok Videos: When identifying a video of interest on TikTok, the original video file should be downloaded and archived. The video page does not offer a download feature, and right-clicking does not present any helpful options. Instead, we must either dig into the source code of rely on third-party websites. First, let's focus on the manual method. Right-click any video page and select the "View Source" option. When the source code is displayed, search for "muscdn" and locate a URL which includes "video" within the path. An actual example follows.

https://v16.muscdn.com/75872b2c9c565afcfce83a9d9779815e/5da50dc4/video/tos/maliva/tos-maliva-v-0068/bf6d76a268fd437b912512d5cdaf41a9/

Copy and paste this URL into a new browser tab to view the full size video, usually in 720p resolution. You can now right-click on this video to save it as a standard mp4 video file. Alternatively, you can replicate this process using the services TikTokDownload (tiktokvideodownload.com) or ExtertsPHP (expertsphp.com/tiktok-video-downloader.html). The ExprtsPHP service also supports numerous additional video hosting websites.