Ever wonder how to properly save a Google photo sphere image? Have you just been taking screenshots of them so far? Well, I have another solution for you.

During my investigations I often end up browsing through Google Maps and Google Street View. Besides the official imagery, Google allows users to upload their own 360° panoramic pictures, so-called photo spheres. These are georeferenced (most of the time) and can be found in the same way you access Street View. A while back I learned you didn’t have to pull the yellow dude onto the map and that you could just click on him. For more information on what you can do with Google Maps and where I actually learned the trick with the little yellow dude, just check out OSINT Techniques‘ great 10 Minute Tip on Youtube.

Now, lets assume we are looking into an area that doesn’t have proper Street View coverage. In this case I want to see if there any photo spheres in a small Syrian town just south of Idlib. I’m lucky and I can find three of them marked on the map.

By clicking on the sphere itself, it will open this individual image. Let’s click on the one furthest to the west (on the left).

Now I can change my point of view by pivoting the image and I can also see which user uploaded this image and when it was uploaded. So far, if I wanted to save a copy of this image I would take a screenshot (or rather multiple screenshots). However, there is way to gain access to the complete image and as a matter of fact to any image that is uploaded to Google Maps, including a larger version of the profile picture seen here.

For this, we need to open the developer tools in our browser. While it could also be done in Chrome or Chromium-based browsers, I prefer using the developer tools in Firefox. Just press Ctrl+Shift+C to access the developer console or you can access it from the Firefox menu (Web Developer/Inspector). It will then look like this:

I have the console located in the bottom half of the screen, the default value usually opens it on the right side of the screen. I’m not going to go into details on all the functionalities of this console, for more information check out Webbreacher‘s 10 Minute Tip on Youtube. I want to direct your attention to the network panel. Clicking on the network panel will show you all the queries performed when you access the page you are viewing. As you can see, Google loads several JPG files for the image displayed above.

Rather than viewing all the traffic, we could also drill down to just images. But again, watch Webbreacher’s video for more details on what can be done with web developer tools. I said Google was loading several JPGs; actually Google is just loading one JPG but defines what we see by subdividing the JPG into different sections. Each section is defined by basic coordinates, depending on where in the overall image this pic is located. By hovering the mouse over the entries, you can see which section it relates to.

Here we can see a 512×512 pixel excerpt of a larger image. The coordinates show where the section is located horizontally in the image (x-axis) vertically (y-axis) and how far we have zoomed in (z-axis/value). As you can see, hovering over the entry will also display the link to the image. By clicking on this network event, we can see further details in a new panel on the right and from here copy the image URL (I compressed the traffic view in the following screenshot).

The URL can then be opened in a new tab. But before I show you the results, let me alter the URL a bit. Instead of opening the image with the coordinate-extension (e.g. =x1-y0-z”), I’ll open the image with an extension that alters the size. In this case I will use “=s8000”, with the number 8000 being the number of horizontal pixels (Google will auto-adjust the vertical pixel-number accordingly). Fairly high quality photo spheres may even allow larger resolutions.

Now just right-click and download the image just as you would download any other picture. Here’s what I’ve downloaded, a 8000×4000 pixel complete photo sphere. This size will easily enable me to zoom in and have a look at further details.

Seeing that we can download images from Google maps this way, let’s try out what else could be downloaded in higher resolutions. Remember the icon of the Google user that uploaded this picture? It is possible to download this icon in a larger resolution as well, and in fact any other picture that this person uploaded. For that, let’s just look the user’s “Local Guide” profile by clicking on his username.

On the “Local Guide” profile you can finds reviews and further images. To access them and the profile pic, just click on an image and open it. Again we will access the developer tools and have a look at the network traffic. Hovering over the entries will give us a preview and we can quickly identify the profile pic.

Copy the URL and manipulate the extension that defines the size or erase this extension completely. Then it usually displays the image at a standard 512×512 resolution or the original resolution (if smaller than 512×512). This is especially useful for profile pictures of people, as the enhanced image might allow you to do a proper reverse image search.

The shown techniques will enable you to download any picture from Google Maps, whether it is a photo sphere or an image posted by a “Local Guide”.

MW-OSINT / 01.07.2020