

Don't Miss: Conduct OSINT Recon on a Target Domain with Raccoon Scannerīecause we can often identify the model of camera used, the settings used, and supplementary information like the owner of the software that made Photoshop changes, it's possible to identify images that came from the same source.Available data fields in Exif are often written to by the device that took the image at the time it was shot but can also be left by processing programs like Photoshop.

The information is used by programs to understand better what is contained inside the file to aid in sorting and other functions. While many social media platforms have largely eliminated this problem by stripping out metadata from files, there are still many images online with this data left entirely intact.Įxchangeable image file format data, or Exif data, is information that accompanies image files and offers many fields that can be populated or left blank. If people don't know what kind of data can be retained in a particular file format, they won't know if they're putting themselves at risk by making a specific file public. Metadata, or the data that describes files like images or videos, is useful during reconnaissance to investigators because it's often overlooked by otherwise careful targets.
