Ahmedabad: The latest issue of Innovation Snapshots by the Interpol Innovation Centre of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) has included ‘Strotpragna,’ an open-source intelligence (OSINT)-focused search engine for intelligence and leak analysis, as one of the innovations.It is a project by faculty members and researchers at the Centre of Excellence in Digital Forensics at National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU) along with NFSU-incubated startup ATL that analyses metadata from IPs, emails, domains, and blockchain entities. Researchers behind the innovation told TOI that it is an indigenous solution that can help law enforcement agencies. There have been queries, but the tool has so far not been handed over to any agency, they added. Dr J M Vyas, vice- chancellor of NFSU, said that it is a major achievement in the field of self-reliance in digital forensics.”Meaning light of/from the source, Strotpragna is a next-generation OSINT search engine platform designed to assist investigators in gathering actionable intelligence from a wide variety of online sources. It allows users to conduct detailed searches on digital identifiers such as IP addresses, email IDs, mobile numbers, URLs, domains, Bitcoin addresses, and even interplanetary file system (IPFS) hashes,” said a senior researcher associated with the project.Team members added that the backend structure is built from an aggregate of multiple open and semi-open data sources, making a continual update of its index possible. “This approach ensures real-time relevance while maintaining user privacy and search traceability,” said another team member.Cybersecurity experts see it as an ongoing movement for homegrown digital forensics tools. “It is also effective for understanding different types of cyber threats and creating threat intelligence frameworks,” added an NFSU official.
Read more on The Times of India
