This is the repository for the LinkScope Client Online Investigation software. LinkScope allows you to perform online investigations by representing information as discrete pieces of data, called Entities. These Entities can then be explored through Resolutions, which take the attributes of Entities as input, and resolve them to different, but connected, pieces of information. In such a way, one can create a knowledge graph (or abstract art) for any particular domain, which should help investigators easily discover answers and insights that otherwise might have been hard to extract.

Features

Some notable features of LinkScope include:

Client

Graph visualisation of information and their relationships
Drag and drop interface to add new data
Timeline of events based on creation date of entities
Import browser tabs and take screenshots of your session
Display locations on a world map
Easily extensible to suit your specific needs

Server

Collaborate with others live on projects
Extract sentiment, entities and relationships from files
Extract text from over 100 types of documents, and get summaries of the content for large files
Ask the Oracle a question about the data, and receive an answer with context

Installation

Supported Platforms

Currently, Linux (Ubuntu, but most Debian derivatives should work) and Windows 10 are supported.

The versions differ slightly because a graph-related library is not available for Windows. This means that the Windows and the Linux build and code differ slightly from each other - where Linux uses SFDP graph layout, Windows uses Neato. Practically, the difference should not be noticable. Windows has a few more visual bugs than Linux, but both versions should function the same.

This repository has the code for the Linux version, with the Windows alternative code commented out where applicable.

Installing the software

Linux

An installer is provided for Ubuntu 20.04 and derivatives. To download the installer and install the software, run the following commands in a terminal:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AccentuSoft/LinkScope_Client/main/LinuxInstaller.sh

bash LinuxInstaller.sh install

Windows

Windows users need to download and install graphviz from: https://www.graphviz.org/download/

The most recent version of the software can be found at the Releases page (most recent one on the top): https://github.com/AccentuSoft/LinkScope_Client/releases

Simply download the most recent release for Windows, unpack, and double-click the 'LinkScope.exe' executable to run the software.

Running from source

One could also clone the repository and run the software as-is.

Some dependencies need to be installed in order for the software to work properly. After downloading the release correspoding to your platform from the Releases tab, please perform the following steps to install the required dependencies:

Linux
- sudo apt update && sudo apt install libopengl0 graphviz libmagic1 -y
- pip install -r requirements.txt --upgrade
- playwright install
Windows
- Download and install the graphviz package from https://www.graphviz.org/download/
- pip install -r requirements.txt
- pip install python-magic-bin
- playwright install

The software comes packaged in a 7zip archive. Uncompress the archive, and double-click the executable to start the software. On Windows, the executable should be named 'LinkScope.exe'. On Linux, it should be named 'LinkScope'.

Then, the Linux-specific functions need to be changed to the Windows version. Currently, this is just the 'rearrangeGraph' function in Core/Interface/CentralPane. The comments at that location indicate the required changes.

Extending the software

LinkScope was built from the ground up to be modular! In this repository's wiki, there are instructions on how to create your own modules, which can contain custom Entities and Resolutions. There is also an example module in the Modules directory that can act as a template, and has a verbose description of most things that a module creator should need to consider.

Security and safety

Some warnings about using the software:

Do NOT open any kind of project file given to you by untrusted sources.

Maliciously crafted files can be used to potentially execute arbitrary code on your computer. The safe way of importing work from others is by having the source export their database as a GraphML file, which another user can then import.

Do NOT use Resolutions obtained by untrusted sources.

Resolutions are essentially Python code that ingests information from various data sources. Make sure that the people providing you with code to run are trustworthy, and that you inspect all the modules you use before installing them. Pre-compiled binaries on systems without Python installed are not able to install new resolutions, so compiling custom versions of the client to suit your investigators' needs should effectively mitigate this risk.

README.md

LinkScope Client

Description