Bellingcat Challenge #35 "Toolkit Tracing" Writeup

This article was automatically translated from Japanese by AI.

Challenge

Bellingcat Challenge #35 “Toolkit Tracing”

On September 2024, Bellingcat announced the new Online Investigations Toolkit, now hosted on GitHub.

Over the years, the toolkit has taken many forms starting as a Google Doc, later a Google Sheet, and even circulated as a PDF.

In 2020, the “Guides & Handbooks” section included a link to a document that is no longer accessible, though it can still be found online.

Your task is to identify the type of hazard listed at the top of the table on page 39 within that document (answer format: Word).

Solution

I began by looking for the 2020 version of Bellingcat’s Online Open Source Investigation Toolkit. I checked the current Toolkit in the Wayback Machine, but its archived history only went back to 2024.

The challenge states that the Toolkit had also circulated as a PDF. Searching through Toolkit copies on Scribd led to a copy from 2020.

Comparing its Guides & Handbooks section with the current list revealed many documents that are no longer included. Because the challenge specifically refers to page 39, I narrowed the candidates to linked PDF documents.

Searching for "FEAT_Version_1.1.pdf" led to a copy in the United Nations Digital Library. On p.39, the hazard type at the top of the table is Explosive.

Source: United Nations Digital Library, “Flash Environmental Assessment Tool (FEAT) Version 1.1”

Flag

Explosive