{"id":405,"date":"2026-03-20T04:03:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T04:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/blog\/2026\/03\/20\/trip-down-memory-lane-an-osint-walkthrough\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T04:03:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T04:03:55","slug":"trip-down-memory-lane-an-osint-walkthrough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/blog\/2026\/03\/20\/trip-down-memory-lane-an-osint-walkthrough\/","title":{"rendered":"Trip Down Memory Lane: An OSINT Walkthrough"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hey everyone, it\u2019s been a while!
I\u2019m back to walk you through an OSINT challenge from Hacktoria<\/a>. So let\u2019s take up the role of a special\u00a0Agent.<\/p>\n

The Case:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Greetings, Special Agent K.
We\u2019re in a bit of a pickle here, Special Agent. The CIA has requested us to hand over all information regarding Operation Runner. Which I believe was the second ever operation we undertook for\u00a0SERPENT.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re requesting all information regarding our targets. However, it seems the Instagram profile for Maksim\u2019s daughter was omitted from our reports. Would you be helpful and get the profile URL for\u00a0me?<\/p>\n

\"\"
An image from the Instagram account (Challenge Image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Objective: Find the Instagram profile URL for Elena\u00a0Kotova.<\/p>\n

The Investigation:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This challenge features a photo associated with Elena Kotova\u2019s Instagram account. So I took my favourite engine and searched with these keywords. As expected, multiple Instagram profiles with the same name showed up. I decided to check them one by\u00a0one.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Search results<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first account didn\u2019t yield the desired results. Then I proceed to check the next\u00a0account.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Instagram Account<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While scrolling through the posts, I found the exact image given in the challenge.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Instagram Account showing same photo as that of\u00a0task.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After identifying the correct Instagram account, I copied the profile\u00a0URL.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Profile URL<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To get the flag, I downloaded the flag zip file given below the task briefing<\/a>. Then I extracted it using the Instagram profile URL as a password.<\/p>\n

Mission Accomplished!<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is one of the easiest OSINT challenges I have solved. But one thing to keep in mind is that just because one finds something easily doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not valuable.<\/p>\n

Until next time, happy OSINTing everyone!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n

Trip Down Memory Lane: An OSINT Walkthrough<\/a> was originally published in OSINT Team<\/a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey everyone, it\u2019s been a while!I\u2019m back to walk you through an OSINT challenge from Hacktoria. So let\u2019s take up the role of a special\u00a0Agent. The Case: Greetings, Special Agent K.We\u2019re in a bit of a pickle here, Special Agent. The CIA has requested us to hand over all information regarding Operation Runner. Which I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}