Challenge

There is a Japanese pictorial fable about three macaques. One covers his eyes, one covers his ears, and one covers his mouth. To some, they represent avoiding temptations of evil. To others, they represent ignoring the truth. These three monkeys are commonly called See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil.

Over at Reddit, a user posted a photo of three people on a subway train. One person has covered ears, one has covered eyes, and one has a covered mouth.


Three Monkeys
Click on the picture to view it under FotoForensics. Does this picture really show See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil sitting on a subway?

Hint

Use error level analysis (ELA) to evaluate the picture. Does any part stand out as being significantly different from the rest of the picture?

Answer

Most of the picture is very dark, indicating low quality and multiple resaves. However, the face mask on Speak No Evil stands out under ELA as being significantly different. We can conclude that the mask was either digitally altered independent of the rest of the picture, or it was digitally added.

Both the digitally altered challenge picture and the pre-modified source picture came from Reddit.

Source