#maritime-osint
5 writeups · all writeups
Cyrillic Confusion: Tracing the Yi Peng 3 Port Log Back to Its Source
Bellingcat Maritime Mysteries. A screenshot of a translated port log for the YUI PENG 3, the ship suspected of cutting two Baltic cables. Google Lens, a German forum, Yandex and the Wayback Machine lead back to the Russian port authority page it came from.
Synoptic Code: Decoding a Russian Navy Weather Report Sent in Morse
Bellingcat Maritime Mysteries. A Morse transmission from the Russian tanker Yelnya on the Black Sea. Morse gives five-digit groups, the call sign leads to an X post, and the WMO ship code turns the groups into weather, with one tempting wrong answer on the way.
Operation Fleet Finder: Identifying a Carrier Nobody Can See
Bellingcat Maritime Mysteries. Grey carriers at a pier, no EXIF, and no hull number on the ship in question. A pier sign, the camera position and the 2024 fleet movements narrow it to one carrier: USS George H.W. Bush.
Lost at Sea — Athena Trace 2026 Writeup
A four-stage chain: read vessel data off a screenshot, derive an AES key from it, pull a ZIP out of the tail of a PNG, and unlock it with the ship's own call sign.
From a Blurry Container Photo to an IMO Number
Maritime OSINT: reading a container number off a low-resolution harbour photo, then tracing the shipping chain to identify the vessel that carried it.