MistressVenom walks us through how she would solve the Summer Camp 2020 – Open Source Intelligence challenge: GEO.

Working on our 2020 Summer Camp Geo Challenge?

Question 1

In many cases, the first thing that you should do when doing any sort of OSINT on an image, is try to figure out where the photo was taken. For some, that may mean the title of the image, it may be contained in the metadata of the photo, or, it will be an identifying portion of the image itself. For this challenge, the hint is contained within the title of the photo, Lake Erie. For those of you in the Midwest or Northeast, or are thrill seekers may also recognize this photo from riding this ride.

Question 2

The second portion of this challenge requires use of a tool that looks at older satellite images, often referred to as the Living Atlas. Obviously, I cannot ask you to go back hundreds of years or even tens of years as this data simply was not available. The Living Atlas is a treasure trove of information and produces highly detailed photos similar to Google Maps. Utilizing this website, we are able to provide the location, either via address or coordinates of the parking lot, and select a date from where we want to view satellite imagery. In this case, we want to provide the address or coordinates to the parking lot and zoom in to see the few cars that are in the parking lot. There are a few cars in the front of the parking lot, near the main gate. We need to keep our eye on this area for the next challenge, since I have asked for the date of when a particular feature changes regarding this parking lot. 

Question 3

One of the newer roller coasters has quickly made a name for itself as it quite literally flies right in front of the parking lot, and dive bombs its passengers a few feet above the main gate. This rollercoaster, is called Gatekeeper, and I’m sure you can guess why 😀

There are two ways people can go about this challenge. The first, is to check the date of opening for a roller coaster within the last 10 years that is right in front of the parking lot, which gives an area for us to narrow down in. Gatekeeper was built in 2013, and the Living Atlas project began in February of 2014, so, logically it should appear in the first iteration of the map, right? Sadly, no, so we must turn to the second option. There are currently placeholder images, such as the image on June 25th that we used to answer the second question. This placeholder image appears frequently, and is a common occurrence until it has been replaced by a known image of that date. To find the changes, you can either select the option on the website to show only versions with changes, or, you can click on the thicker white bars in the time picker, as those are the known changes. In this case, we are looking for the first change after the initial photo, and will use these to provide the answer.