OSINT Writeup: Sofia Santos Challenge #025
Last updated
Last updated
Hello and welcome back to another OSINT Writeup. Today, we solve Sofia Santos' OSINT Challenge #025. Although this challenge looks like a super difficult one at first glance, it was actually pretty easy (thanks to good old geolocation). So, let's jump in!
For this challenge, we have a quote on a wall. We have to find out:
a) The building's location. b) A quote from the same building containing the word “anarchy”.
Sources used:
Google Image Search
Google Search
Stephanie Avery Store
PC Mag
Rochester Subway Website
The Colorblind Photographer
Flickr
First thing I did was run a reverse image search with Google. A few exact matches landed me inside a Reddit post.
But, unfortunately this was a dead end. The post does contains the same image but there are no quoted sources. Beware of the Wikipedia rabbit hole! It made me curious about the May 1968 French Civil Unrest but didn't give me answers for the challenge at hand XD
After running into several dead ends, I decided to do a text search instead.
I searched the text and then turned to the Images tab. Here, I found several images of the same wall from different angles. One result popped up several times, it was the Stephanie Avery Store.
Out of curiousity, I visited this page and voila! There is a location quoted. It's pretty vague but at least it's something.
The location is quoted as "Abandoned computer factory, Rochester, USA" Although it doesn't give us much, I decided to look it up anyway. The first two results seem important. I first visited the PC Mag article about "spooky abandoned tech factories."
In the list, there is only one factory which seems to be located in Rochester. Fortunately, the very next Google search result gives detailed information about the same factory along with images.
Although the Rochester Subway page doesn't contain the image in Sofia's challenge, it does point towards another article by The Colorblind Photographer.
This page too contains several photographs for Sykes Datatronics and we have it! I found the image in Sofia's challenge. The answer to the first task is Sykes Datatronics' abandoned building in Rochester, USA.
From the Rochester Subway article we even get a Street View and coordinates for the building. But, this street view is from May 2012. Unfortunately, the building does not exist anymore. I find follow-up articles from Rochester Subway stating that some parts of the building have been demolished. It once stood at the coordinates 43.16336142960553, -77.63482496273153.
I think this is the closest we will get to time travelling, looking for a building that stood years ago. Feels pretty melancholic to see walls and quotes from a demolished structure. A proof that people once lived here, maybe it will live on in this blog post and on Google Maps.
Next, we have to locate another quote inside the same building which contains the word "anarchy". Now that we know what building it is, I turned to Google once again. This time I found a Flickr album containing several photographs for the same building.
In the album by Alex Luyckx, there are several new images. And there we go, I found another quote on one of the pillars with the word "anarchy".
The quote says "THIS OFFICE WAS A PRISON FOR OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN WAGE SLAVERY. LET'S MAKE IT A CARNIVAL FOR OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN ANARCHY." If we want to double check, the same pillar can be seen in one of the images on Rochester Subway page but without the full quote.
And the challenge is solved! A big thanks to Sofia for another fun challenge, and thank you for reading. I will see you in the next writeup. Till then, take care!
