Bellingcat Challenge: Fresh Faced

So today I am working on a new BellingCat Challenge provided by Gralhix! I am super excited about this challenge because its a collab between two well known entities! So lets dive in.

🎯 The Mission:

Locate the original video footage of an interview using only an image as our starting point.

Let’s break down how I approached this OSINT puzzle step-by-step, and how curiosity, persistence, and a few digital tricks brought me to the prize.

I started off with the obvious: a reverse image search. But to my surprise? No hits. Nada. Zilch.

But that didn’t stop the hunt.

I saw that google had a translate function and it allows you compare side by side. We can see that this text was in Croatian!

Next, I hit the digital pavement searching for Croatian news outlets covering the individual in the image — Elliot. No immediate luck, but I had another idea…

I decided to search for domain codes for Croatian websites and i did find that .hr is the domain code for Croatia! Let’s focus on Croatian domains.

So next I decided to do some Google Dorking magic: I decided to search

Elliot Higgins "Bloger" site:.hr

And bingo 💥 — I found a Croatian news website featuring multiple articles on Elliot.

I scrolled through and boom — I found the exact same image used in one of the articles!

Within the article, I noticed the author’s name: Tomislav Krasnec. That name stood out — and my OSINT instincts kicked in.

I jumped over to YouTube and searched for Tomislav Krasnec. The video was the first result! We can see the video was from 12 years ago and the thumbnail was the exact image as the challenge and the article!

🎉 Jackpot.

So after inspecting the video i saw that the URL had our answer!

🔑 The video URL (and answer) is:
k7qd4Y6QAfY

This challenge was a blast — combining visual analysis, translation, domain awareness, and a bit of Google Dorking to solve the puzzle. This challenge was cool because once you find a pivot point you can start to unravel the mystery a little more.

Big shoutout to Gralhix and Bellingcat for putting this together. I’m already looking forward to the next mission.

Until next time — stay curious, stay sharp, and keep hunting. 🕵️‍♀️