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Tag: developer tools

OSINT Quick Tips: That CashApp QR Code on The Web Might Actually Be Hiding a Profile Photo!

Published by hatless1der on March 26, 2024

If you do a lot of web-based OSINT research like I do, you’ve most likely conducted username searches using a powerful tool like https://whatsmyname.app that scurry out onto hundreds of websites in search of profiles bearing the username you’re interested in. In doing so, you may have come across CashApp user pages that usually bear a few common things: a cashtag (username), a display name, and most of the time… a seemingly useless QR code.

Or is it?

You see, while it is the case sometimes that the account holder hasn’t actually populated a profile photo, and therefore just displays a QR code, recently I noticed that the web version of profiles seems to display QR codes even when a profile photo is actually present for the mobile version of the account. Finding the photo (if one exists) from the web is quite simple if you know to look for it, and I’ll give you 2 different ways of doing it…

Note for the extra tenacious investigators out there: While what I’m going to show you works on the CashApp website, the thought process and application may be something you find useful elsewhere in your work too. Be curious, and see where it leads you!

Option 1 – Get Your Hands Dirty

The first, and more manual way, is to go to a profile page like https://cash.app/$JaneDoe (I made this one up so we’re not actually showing someone real here), and drill down in the source code of the page to the place where the profile photo is hiding, should one exist. I’m going to explain this as a Chrome user by the way, and yes, I am well aware of all the “Chrome sucks!” drums that some people like to beat for anyone that will listen.

Start by right clicking somewhere on the QR code and selecting “Inspect” from the menu of options that appear. This will open your browsers developer tools so you can have a look under the hood. The line you’re dropped on will be just a few above the one you’re actually looking for. Look down a few lines for the words:

<div class="mobile-only">

Expand this section by clicking the little triangle to the left of the line and keep doing this for the subsequent drop-downs that appear until you see (if one exists for the profile you’re on) a line that reads:

<img src="https://____________________________________.jpg

Now you can right click on the hyperlink for where the image is being delivered from in CashApp’s content delivery network (CDN), and open it in a new tab to view! Hovering over the hyperlink will show you a preview as well. It looks like this:

Great success!! (just kidding, I hated the movie Borat)

Option 2 – The Easy Button

I’m willing to be that several of you are smart cookies and probably thought of this second option as soon as you started reading the first one and saw “mobile-only”, but for the rest of us who just mash keys for a living, perhaps it wasn’t super obvious…

Open your developer tools using “Inspect” or a hotkey, then leverage that little icon near the top left corner of those developer tools to toggle your browser right on over to the mobile view. (This is something we use in OSINT all the time when we know that the display and/or functionality of a site will change to our benefit. I’m looking at you, Instagram follower lists!) Simply clicking that little button takes us right on over to the mobile view for CashApp and immediately confirms the presence of that image we’re looking for, without the need to invest our hard earned free time for the extra clicks!

Use this “mobile view” method first, and then take all the time you’ve saved to instead click share on this blog post. #shameless

OSINT Quick Tips: 2 Simple Methods of Getting Around Twitter’s Annoying Login Wall

OSINT Quick Tips: 2 Simple Methods of Getting Around Twitter’s Annoying Login Wall

Published by hatless1der on October 2, 2023

Based on how often Twitter, oh sorry… I mean X, is changing these days, there’s a pretty good chance this blog will be obsolete by the time you read it but here goes anyway…

Have you recently found yourself trying to visit a Twitter profile (when not logged in), and while it may initially load on the page, instantly you’re met with an annoying pop up after being redirected to a login prompt? Without a sock puppet account (which is getting harder to create and hang onto), you’re unable to get beyond that unexpected barrier.

ANNOYING.

Annoying, but not impossible.

That is, if all we need to see is the top portion of the profile page where the bio, location, links and other useful information is stored. If that’s all you need from the target’s page, here are a couple of easy options for you…

1. View Google’s cached result

Simple but effective. Google is allowed to crawl and index the profile, without falling victim to the dreaded redirect to a login page. Take advantage of that in one of two ways…

Locate the profile via Google search and simply right click the 3 dot menu next to the result. If Google has a cached version, you’ll find the button for “Cached” as an option in the resulting pop up.

The result is displayed in a way that most users will recognize as different than how the platform is designed to look, but the important part is that the profile information you need is there. This won’t load any posts, replies, media, or likes, but it will get you a look at everything appearing above.

Secondarily, you can try using Google’s “cache:” operator to query your way directly to the cached version of the profile page by typing in the text as shown here, replacing this username with the one you’re searching for:

2. Enter the profile via an indexed post from Google results.

If Google has crawled and indexed content that includes a status written by your target profile, or perhaps a comment they were @ mentioned in by someone else, you can visit the link to that post directly from Google and no login wall will appear. In a second, I’ll show you how to get to a clear version of the profile from there. First, we need to find a post/status/reply with our user in it.

There are lots of ways you can ask Google to find you these kinds of posts from the platform that contain the linked profile name of your target, here is just one example: 

twitter.com/fatusfee inurl:status

Simply click one of the results and head right on into the platform.

Now we’re in, we just need to click on the target’s name here in order to be directed to their profile page.
NOTE: Do not right click and open the profile in a new tab! This will trigger the redirect to a login page. Simply click right on their profile name and load in the same window you’re in.

GRIFFIN YOU LIED TO ME! THERE’S A DAMN LOGIN BOX ON THE SCREEN!

Deep breath.

Unfortunately, you can’t just “X” out of the box and view the page (see what I did there?). So if you are one of those overachievers who tried to run on ahead, welcome back.

While on the page like the one above, open your browser’s developer tools. It’s easiest just to right click on that login pop up box and choose “Inspect” from the options.

This will open the dev tools, and you can (while in the Elements tab), hover over the various lines and see the corresponding elements on the screen being highlighted. Just go up a handful of lines from where you are until your hovering is causing the entire pop up box to be highlighted, like you see here:

Right click and choose “Delete Element”. Poof!

Now you can close the developer tools and freely view the page, though as before, this will not include the profile’s posts, replies media or likes. You’re simply viewing the profile details, photo, banner and other user-supplied information.

Bonus tip… If you’re a bit of a perfectionist, like I am, and you hate that the opaque overlay is still over top of the entire the web page making the screen appear a bit greyed out, well you can delete that element as well. It’ll be the line just above where we previously deleted the box. Delete that and you’ll be viewing a beautifully clear page like the one below.

If you get a little too deletion happy and accidentally delete something important, never fear! Just reload the page and start again until you get it right.