● Case Studies CyberTrace — OSINT

CyberTrace OSINT in Action

How law enforcement agencies, financial institutions, and enterprise security teams use CyberTrace to close investigations that manual OSINT could not.

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94%
Faster investigation vs manual OSINT
47+
Live intelligence sources queried per search
<2s
Average query response time
1B+
Records indexed across sources
Case Study 01

Cybercrime Investigations & Dark Web Intelligence

CASE · 01 · 001

Operation DarkNet: Narcotics Marketplace Operator Identified

State Cybercrime Unit
Northern India
Duration: 19 days
6 states involved

A state cybercrime unit had been investigating a dark web marketplace selling pharmaceutical-grade narcotics across 6 Indian cities for over 3 months with no significant leads. The operators used encrypted aliases, cryptocurrency, and layered anonymization — leaving no conventional investigative trail. Manual OSINT had recovered only 3 vendor aliases with no real-world linkage.

CyberTrace's automated dark web crawler indexed the marketplace across Tor and I2P simultaneously, correlating vendor behaviour patterns, writing styles, PGP key timestamps, and cryptocurrency wallet footprints.

Dark web vendor alias correlation across 3 markets
Cryptocurrency wallet graph analysis (Monero + Bitcoin)
PGP key fingerprint timeline matching
Breach database cross-reference for credential leaks
Social media inference from writing style analysis
Historical domain WHOIS and email trail reconstruction
48hr
Time to first real-world identity link
22
Individuals in network mapped
19d
Total investigation timeline

CyberTrace correlated 14 vendor aliases to a single real-world identity. The full network of 22 individuals was mapped. Prosecution commenced with a court-ready 89-page intelligence report — all generated within CyberTrace's report module. Prior manual investigation had taken 3 months with no actionable leads.

The speed was unlike anything we had used before. What took our analysts weeks of manual work, CyberTrace did in two days — and gave us connections we hadn't even considered looking for.
— Lead Investigator, State Cybercrime Unit (name withheld)
CASE · 01 · 002

Corporate Espionage: Source Code Leak Traced to Competitor

Multinational Software Company
Bengaluru, India
Duration: 11 days
₹18 Crore IP at stake

A multinational software company's security team detected snippets of proprietary source code appearing in a competitor's product release. Internal DLP tools had not flagged any exfiltration. The company needed to identify the leak source and build a legally defensible evidence trail before initiating civil proceedings.

CyberTrace performed a multi-vector investigation: scanning dark web paste sites for code fragments, cross-referencing GitHub repositories, tracing developer forum aliases, and correlating breach data with internal employee credential lists.

Paste site and code repository scanning for IP fragments
Developer identity correlation across Stack Overflow, GitHub, Hacker News
Breach database check — 2 employee accounts in recent leaks
Dark web job board — found posting offering "proprietary backend code"
Timeline reconstruction from forum post metadata
PDF intelligence export for legal team
1
Employee identified as leak source
11d
Full investigation timeline
Legal proceedings initiated successfully

CyberTrace identified the leaking employee's secondary alias on a dark web developer board offering proprietary backend APIs for sale. Digital forensics on the device (with legal authorization) confirmed the exfiltration. Civil complaint filed under IT Act Section 66B — case settled within 6 months.

CASE · 01 · 003

KYC/AML Deep-Check: ₹340 Crore NBFC Fraud Detected Pre-Disbursement

Non-Banking Financial Company
Mumbai, India
Duration: 3 hours per applicant
Fraud prevented pre-disbursement

An NBFC's credit team flagged unusual patterns in a batch of 240 high-value loan applications — all appearing legitimate on surface-level KYC checks. The company's standard verification process returned no adverse media on any applicant. But the simultaneous nature and geographic clustering of applications suggested organised fraud.

CyberTrace's batch OSINT mode processed all 240 applicants simultaneously, cross-referencing their digital footprints across social media, dark web, business registries, court records, and news archives.

Batch processing of 240 applicant identities
Cross-reference against 12 dark web breach databases
Business registry and court record correlation
Social media presence verification and authenticity scoring
Adverse media search across 1,400 Indian news sources
Network graph: 68 applicants linked through common shell entities
68
Applications flagged as coordinated fraud ring
₹340Cr
Fraudulent disbursement prevented
3hr
Full batch analysis time

CyberTrace identified that 68 of the 240 applicants shared shell company directorships, coordinated social media creation dates, and a shared IP address cluster from their online applications. All 68 applications were rejected. FIU-IND complaint filed — coordinated fraud network subsequently prosecuted.

CyberTrace found what three human analysts would have taken a week to find — and did it in three hours. It's now mandatory in our pre-disbursement workflow for loans above ₹50 lakh.
— Head of Credit Risk, NBFC (name withheld)
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