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Maltego Part 5. Your face surrendered you

Hello dear friends. Today we’ll talk about the heavier artillery in the OSINT framework, namely, the application of face recognition technology from Social Links for Maltego.


If you have not read the previous articles in the series about Maltego, then now is the time:


During testing the functionality of searching for information on various social networks using Maltego (see Part 4), I was surprised that just by the name and photo from the account on Instagram, Maltego immediately found my LinkedIN account.

This is where, I suppose, the Social Links Face Recognition mechanism worked. You can’t just go and get past such a topic! You need to make sure how accurate the functionality is and whether it can be fully used in OSINT, or is my case unique and the output will be clogged with similar people.



We will test on various media personalities. Firstly, they definitely have accounts on social networks. Fakes with their photos should also be. Secondly, we can clearly determine if there is an error in recognition. Already Donald trump from any other person anyone will distinguish.


Since I let it slip, let it be Donald Trump)

For the first time, we will consider in detail the procedure, according to the instructions from Social Links, for all other cases we will only analyze the results. The claimed percentage of accuracy from SL for recognition is 75%, which is not enough.

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We go into the Social Links account and create a person’s profile there. We indicate the name and surname, country and gender.



There is still a large “note” field for notes.

Add a photo. We choose both ordinary and not quite.



Everything is ready. You can start!



For search we will use Entitie - Search Profile by Face. We loaded the photo into the SL account to get a convenient direct link to it. But if you already have it elsewhere, then you can use it.



After starting the search for the first photo, it became a little clear how the system as a whole works. The person responsible for facial recognition in the Social Links neural network makes an API request to the social network to search for all accounts by the given name and surname. After which, already from the photos of these accounts, he makes a comparison through face recognition with the photo that we indicated as a reference.
Total, according to Trump's first photograph, we have:

  • Facebook - 1 account (not enough)
  • LinkedIn - 1 account (not his, but Trump is in the photo together with the account owner)
  • Instagram - 8 accounts
  • VKontakte - 8 accounts
  • Twitter - 7 accounts
  • MySpace - 3 accounts
  • Foursquare - 6 accounts

It is also worth noting that the system was able to determine the face of Trump even on photo collages and joint photos.







As a result of working with the first photo, misses on accounts with random photos were not noticed. After starting the search for 2 and 3 photos, several additional accounts appeared. There are still no left pictures. All accounts placed on the graph contain the image of Trump in one form or another. Even Photoshop art did not slip past.



Total, after working out Transforms for all the reference photos, we have:

  • Facebook - 2 accounts (Still not enough)
  • LinkedIn - 1 account
  • Instagram - 10 accounts
  • VKontakte - 8 accounts
  • Twitter - 10 accounts
  • MySpace - 7 accounts
  • Foursquare - 7 accounts

In this case, only a LinkedIN account should be considered a blunder, since it belongs to Blaine Kelly, but in the photo it is captured together with Trump, so, in fact, it's 30/70. Trump is still there. The final graph in the screenshot below.



Zemfira Ramazanova



Now let's try to recognize the female face. On the radio in the office, the song “Cuckoo” was playing, so Zemfira got into the article. All honestly, no bias.

Test photos below.



Zemfira's fakes, of course, are smaller than Donald Trump's fakes, respectively, the information output is cleaner.

Total managed to find:

  • Facebook - 5 accounts
  • Instagram - 3 accounts
  • VKontakte - 2 accounts



No random photos of people like Zemfira were noticed. I believe that this is a consequence of the fact that the primary sampling is based on the full name. And if you get an account with the name of Zemfira and the image of the left person or picture, then the face recognition system will already filter him out.

Jackie Chan



Let's complicate the task. We’ll check how the system works on an actor with a pronounced Asian appearance. He specially chose for the test both the pictures of an aged artist and his photo in the prime of his career.

Photos for the test:



Total it turned out to find:

  • Facebook - 9 accounts
  • Instagram - 8 accounts
  • VKontakte - 6 accounts
  • Twitter - 4 accounts



There are no random pictures of old Asians. The information output is quite accurate. Except for a bunch of fakes with the name and photo of Jackie Chan.

As you can see, accounts with photos of Jackie at any age are equally well searched.


Thandie Newton




And finally, let's check how the system works when looking for photos of people of the black race.

Here, for the search, I chose the actress Thandie Newton, who is familiar to all of us from her roles in such films as The Chronicles of Riddick, Rock and Roll, Han Solo. Star Wars Tales and, of course, The Wild West World.

Test photos:



Total was found:

  • Facebook - 2 accounts
  • Instagram - 3 accounts
  • Twitter - 6 accounts
  • MySpace - 5 accounts

There are no mistakes in recognition.



Summary and Conclusions



Let's summarize. According to the results of my tests and reading the documentation on the work of Transforms with the Face Recognition mechanism from Social Links, I can safely say that they work great. While writing this article, I even managed to close one OSINT project with their application.

However, there are several BUT about which you should remember when working with them:

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Well, that’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed this article.
Note Author: by the way, in Moscow, a face recognition system is already in full swing through surveillance cameras in the city. Rumor has it that they will even launch drones for patrolling. For better or worse, everyone decides for himself.



Do not miss new parts. In the next article, we will talk about how you can apply geolocation information in OSINT using Maltego.

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