A powerful tool to automate information retrieval

Maltego is a software developed by the American company Paterva. It performs automatic search (called “transformations” in the language of Maltego) and creates a graphical representation of the information obtained. Concretely, the tool finds all information related to a pseudonym, an email or an IP address and establishes connections between them.

In the context of due diligence, Maltego is thus very interesting. Let’s take the example of an investigation into a physical person whom the email address only is known. From this address, Maltego is able to find all the services or websites attached to it (forum, collaborative websites, etc.).

Human approach is still compulsory
At this point comes the human approach, which is at the heart of Spin Partners’ services. If Maltego can aggregate a huge amount of data and establish some links between them, the work of the analyst is essential to make it useful. The analyst makes sense of the information, eliminates false positive and determine what is relevant and deserves to be developed and highlighted.

In this case, the work of the analyst consists, based on the information collected by Maltego, in determining the most relevant sources and investigating them in order to find more information. If the email address was linked to a collaborative website, it would lead to a pseudonym, which could in turn lead to new information or, maybe, to new research areas.

Within the framework of its missions, whether due diligence or intelligence, Spin Partners always seeks to combine technological tools with a structured methodological approach centered on the human factor. As a conclusion, Maltego brings raw material then transformed into valuable assets thanks to the consultant work.