Discord is Not All Fun and Games
Discord brings together all sorts of communities drawing the attention of investigators and intelligence analysts
Discord is a social media that’s best described as Slack for entertainment. It gained popularity in the gaming community with its ability to stream, video chat, and organize channels based on interests. After the gamers, other groups started to frequent this social media, creating open and invite-only communities. While some people organize to share cooking recipes, others use Discord as a communication channel for criminal activity, extremism, and radicalizing youth.
There are many examples of how Discord was used for nefarious purposes. Documents were leaked from the Pentagon related to the Russia-Ukraine war, white supremacists used it to organize protests in 2017, QAnon misinformation was spread widely, and the Capitol insurrection was organized on social media platforms in 2021.
Discord has a lot of value for investigations and intelligence gathering. It’s good for researching users and public servers, finding a history of communication, and observing trends. The easiest way to look into this information is to use OSINT tools.
Some of the tools require a user ID or a server ID. To get them, we need to switch our Discord account to Developer Mode. It can be done in User Settings, by scrolling to Advanced and switching a toggle of the Developer Mode. After that, a right-click on any user or server would show an ID.
User Search Tools
Each server has a member list visible on the right-side pane. It includes a hierarchy of server members and basic information about their profiles. Discord has embedded search by a user so it’s possible to see their commenting and posting activity in one place.
Additional Tools:
User Search: searchable Discord profiles
Discord Lookup: any ID lookup
Top.GG: a link https://top.gg/user/USER ID leads to profile information
Server Search
A list of databases with different servers divided by categories:
Top GG (bot search)
Another way to find a server is to try different combinations of server names and put them in a link discord.gg/community name, and search for it in Google or on other social media.
Other Tools
Discord History Tracker: a service that allows tracking and saving changes on servers, groups, and conversations. The tool is also available in the desktop application version.
Unfurl: a service that helps to find the time when a Discord server (or any other link) was created
Pixelatomy: another service that helps to identify when a server was established using a server ID