Introduction: Obtaining an extortionist’s IP address requires preserving the integrity of the digital evidence. The essential phases—preservation and technical analysis—along with the tools we use at Detective Hacker are outlined below.
Extortion channel | Where to find the IP | Correct procedure |
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The Received: line closest to the sender in the raw header |
Download the message as .eml , select “Show original,” and copy it without editing. |
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SMS / VoIP calls | Carrier CDR records | Judicial or prosecutor’s request—Art. 588 LECrim (ES) / equivalent court order. |
Social networks (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) | Server logs | Requires a judicial request to the platform (MLAT or Budapest Convention). |
Encrypted messaging (Telegram, Signal) | Registration IP / last login (if retained by the provider) | Same: judicial request. |
Extortion website (forum, pastebin, dark web) | access.log of the hosting or Cloudflare | Request to the provider; if using a reverse proxy, check X-Forwarded-For headers. |
Tool | Use |
---|---|
Wireshark | Capture packets in real time (VoIP, web chats) and isolate the source IP. |
FTK Imager / Autopsy | Clone and inspect the victim’s server or PC disk without altering MAC times. |
Logstash + Kibana (ELK) | Ingest and sign email, firewall, and IDS logs; build attribution dashboards. |
HashCalc / OpenSSL | Compute and verify SHA-256 and SHA-512 for evidence sealing. |
Magnet AXIOM Cloud | Legally extract records from Snapchat, WhatsApp Cloud, and Facebook under court order. |
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