Welcome back to track one.
Track one starting off great here with Angus, Angus Red, Angus Red Blue, however you want to call him, Charles Worth.
Obviously, it's going to be a great talk.
It's OSINT, the entry drug your mother never told you about.
And I can 100% agree with that.
It is becoming a drug very quickly.
It's becoming an addiction of my own.
And yeah, we're looking to get straight into this talk and have a great talk with Angus.
Thanks, mate.
Thanks.
I'll take it from there.
So thanks very much for welcoming me and thanks for the great keynote by Benjamin.
I think it was absolutely fascinating.
And hopefully I can keep you all entertained.
So yeah, here's my talk.
It's about OSINT, but it's gonna be a bit different, nothing technical.
But it's about how I see it as a sort of a gateway into the information security industry and what you can learn along the way.
So here we go.
So outline of my talk.
So basically, I'll do a brief introduction.
We'll then talk about what OSINT is in a very basic fashion.
I'm sure everyone will cover that in great detail today, but it's just a bit of an overview.
Why we do OSINT and how it's used.
Then we'll talk about sort of the drug.
So why it's awesome.
The result that comes from that.
What can you gain directly?
And then we'll sort of feed the supply of the security industry.
And then hopefully there's some questions right after a summary.
So who am I?
So I'm obviously Charles Roth, with a silent W.
I go by Angus Red.
I'm former British military.
I served six years in the British Airborne, four years of which was a signal attachment commander.
I then did six years in high risk security consulting, normally in East and West Africa, and also some time in the Middle East and Southern Iraq as a bodyguard.
And then for the last sort of three and a half, four years, I've been a lead technical security recruiter for a agency based out of the UK that also has an office up in the United States.
Technical security recruiting.
So pentesting, vetting, DFIL, threat intel, you know, interactive operations, that sort of stuff.
I'm also co-organized with BSAT Cape Town.
I started a small Discord community called HackSouth dedicated to African security professionals.
And I'm also hoping to one day be a DFIL consultant.
On the OSINT side, I've taken part in three OSINT, TraceLab, Missing Persons CTFs, which I really enjoy.
First time, I finished 53rd with my team from HackSouth.
And more recently, we finished 7th.
But unfortunately, I won't be participating tomorrow.
But I wish luck to everyone that does.
Right, so what is OSINT?
I took this directly from Wikipedia.
So to keep it short, open source intelligence is a multi method qualitative and quantitative methodology for collecting, analyzing and making decisions about data accessible in publicly available sources to be used in an intelligence context.
Right, so OSINT under one name or another has been around for hundreds of years with the advent of sort of instant communications and rapid information transfer, a great deal of actionable and predictive intelligence can now be obtained from the public and classified sources.
So a lot of us will find that we've been doing OSINT for many, many, many years.
We just didn't know it was called OSINT.
We thought maybe perhaps we were just a bit creepy.
So sources, so where people gather intelligence, so typically, media, so print media, newspapers online, the internet, which is typically, you know, social media, blogs, message boards, that tends to be the bulk of where you find a lot of information,
public government data, which can be sort of government reports.
Here in South Africa, we have something called the CIPC, Registered Companies.
And on there, you can find, you know, someone's got a name or an ID number, you can find their company information, their ID numbers, their personal addresses, returns, all that sort of information.
Next, we have professional and academic publications.
So this is academic journals, academic papers, you know, talks.
You know, if I want to do OSINT on someone in the community, and they've done a lot of talks, I'll typically watch the first five minutes of their talks, because that's where they do the intro, like I did, and you can usually gather a lot of information from that.
Commercial data, you know, that's commercial imagery, financial industrial assessments, and databases, and then grey literature, which I'm not so sort of strong on, which is technical reports, preprints, patents, any of that sort of information.
So OSINT is distinguished from research in that it applies to the process of intelligence to create tailored knowledge supportive of specific decision by a specific individual or group.
So, you know, if you go to the definition of OSINT on Wikipedia, you'll find exactly this, but I thought I would just reiterate it.
So why is OSINT, and sort of what do we use it for?
So on the fun side, we have CTFs and challenges.
So here we have a screenshot of the OSINT challenges on Hack the Box.
So usually this is based on fake information, or fake accounts, or sock accounts, in order to test someone's ability to gather intelligence and piece it together to form a hypothesis.
So with Hack the Box, you'll find a, you know, you'll go down a bit of a, you know, from one place to another, from one account to another, and then in the end you'll find like a tag, a Hack the Box tag, which is known as a flag, and you submit it and you get your points.
I'll show you what one of those cases can look like very briefly, shortly.
Next, you have personally developed challenges.
So Bushido, Will, that's speaking later, he has one or two challenges that I've done which are really great, because it's like a storyline.
So you get one information that leads to the next, that leads to the next, which is really fun.
And then on Twitter you get, you know, hashtag OSINT challenge, where, you know, I did one recently, which I'll show you shortly, which is like, you'll take a picture of somewhere where you are, and you'll ask people to try to figure out where you are.
I know RAG and Viking introduced me to that quite often, one another.
Right, so here's one of the challenges on Hack the Box.
So the typical setup, you'll have to, potentially you have to download something, and it says here, super-secure startups, private information is being leaked, can you find out how?
So your only bit of information is the name super-secure startup, which is a company , and they leak information, and you need to find out how.
So what you then do is you go, you go search on Google, and you find super-secure startup, you look at LinkedIn pages and Twitter, and you walk down a path, and that'll give you information to help you unlock the file that you've downloaded.
And it's quite fun.
Some of them are very challenging.
I've had help from from RAG and Viking on this, but it's really, you know, it's interesting to do.
All right, so hashtag ocean challenges.
So recently, I went on holiday with a missus.
So in the left, you can see a picture that I took.
That's obviously, it didn't have all the squares on it.
And then a friend of mine , Neon Pegasus, he then took on the challenge.
He's been getting more involved with Ocean recently.
He's also taken part in the Trace Labs with me before.
So then he pretty much pinpointed within a couple of meters of where exactly I was.
And you can see there his report that he drew up from Google.
So, you know, these are really fun things to do on the weekends, and they're not too serious, and it's all semi-fake information.
So it's quite safe.
Right, so next is Trace Labs, which we'll know about quite a bit.
They actually have a CTF going tomorrow, which unfortunately, I won't be attending, but I wish everyone best of luck.
So typically, the Trace Labs CTF is, it's a CTF that has between about 8 to 12 missing persons cases.
It's to challenge someone's ability, but it is based on real people and real cases, and so that has a real outcome.
So the intelligence is passed to law enforcement.
So, you know, afterwards, they take all the information, collate it, and flag.
And then from there, a report is sent to law enforcement to help find the people represented in the missing persons cases.
So it's really, really interesting and exciting to do, and you can learn a lot from it, and you learn how you can shrink pieces of information together and corroborate.
So really, really worth considering.
And part of my talk today is to try to get people interested in doing this kind of stuff, because it can lead you down a very interesting path.
Right, next is in a professional sense.
So, you know, Red Team and Social Engineering.
So many Red Teamers will use open source intelligence to gather intel on proposed targets, typically during sort of like a recon phase.
Okay, so they usually, they will use that information to build a picture on their clients in order to exploit vulnerabilities, usually a human factor, using techniques such as social engineering and other forms of exploitation tactics.
As I said earlier, it's often part of the recon phase of a Red Team engagement.
And it can sometimes be of massive, massive, massive value.
You know, you can, you'll find, you know, that person in marketing or sales or HR recruiting that might not be so security inclined, and that can usually be your point of exploitation.
Okay, so something I did recently, and this actually led me to want to do a different talk about sort of the different uses of OSINT, you know, outside of what we might think.
So I've used OSINT for property investments.
So, you know, I used OSINT to gain information about property, its owners, their situation, and gather intel on any unknowns about a property to make an informed decision about investment or purchase.
So long story short, I looked at a very cheap house in a small farmer's town near me.
The house was massively undervalued, and I want to understand why.
So I did some research, I found the ERF number, or the ADF number as we call it in South Africa.
From there, I got the owner's names, I found out the valuations that it had in the years past, which were a lot higher than what they were now.
I also found various social media accounts showing what people are getting up to at the house.
I quickly realized it's not something I want to purchase.
I don't exactly want people knocking on my door looking for a fix at two in the morning with my missus and my family.
So I made the conscious decision not to pursue it.
But this is something that a lot of people don't think about and should be considered.
Right, business development.
So as I said in the beginning of the talk, I'm a lead security recruiter, and I'll often use OSINT in a very light manner to do some business development.
So as a recruiter, I do extensive OSINT to understand my clients or potential clients, what makes them tick and how to string pieces of information together to execute a better pitch to a client.
So often to get a new client, I know once I get a client on the phone, I tend to land them because we've got that strong technical prowess when it comes to recruiting.
But typically, you need an in.
So to get an in with these companies, I'll find some people I can talk to at the company who are more susceptible to conversation.
I'll conduct basic research on the, you know, let's call it a target and people I know and who know them.
I'll build a picture of the company and the people I want to contact, and then I'll execute an outreach using some basic info to help break the ice and build familiarity.
So for instance, I'm ex-military.
If I find one of my targets at a company who is also ex-military, you know, and this is genuine, I would say like, hey, you know, I see you also serve, you know, thank you for your service.
I served between the years of this and this and, you know, I'm sure we can find some common ground.
So a lot of people do use this.
Right, next is interview prep.
This is actually where I found LinkedIn and where I started doing extensive OSINT without knowing it was OSINT.
So this is back when I was leaving the military.
So as an interviewee, when I was a contractor, I do extensive research into the company I'm interviewing with.
So this is to obviously know who I'm going to potentially be joining.
And it was also to build a picture of that company and who works there and how they operate.
And the other big factor for an interview is to show that I have a big interest in that company and what they do and how they operate.
So, you know, when that typical question comes on in the first interview, like, what do you know about us?
I could say like, your company does this, they specialize in this, they operate here, here, here, here.
I've seen some really good media reports on this and this, you know, in Forbes and in this publication.
You know, you have six boards of directors, three of them went to Oxford, you know, and then they'll suddenly go like, whoa, okay, cool, that's enough.
You're not going to say bad stuff like, you know, I know his missus loves wearing red dresses, because that does not help your interview.
But it helps you show a company that you've done your research.
A lot of people fail to do even the most basic research about a company and despite how good you are, companies will be less inclined to hire you if you haven't done your research.
Right, so candidate vetting.
So this is something that I don't have to do that often.
But if I get... when I do calls with candidates, it's typically also to find out, like , are they, you know, are they compass mentors?
Like, are they, you know, are they just standard, you know, semi-normal people?
Or are they completely, you know, are they crazy?
It doesn't happen very often.
Every now and then you get something that it bugs me, I think there's something going on here.
So then I'll do some OSINT.
And that's basically just to understand who I'm potentially dealing with.
You know, you might find someone has some, very right-wing or, you know, opinions on Facebook or something, and it helps you vet someone potentially joining a company.
So it's really of value.
You know, I don't really care what you do in your off time.
But, you know, if it is... if I can get information that shows me that what you do when you're off time can negatively affect the company, that is some information I want to know.
Or at least want to be pre-warned about it.
Right.
Okay.
So why is OSINT so damn awesome?
Right.
So, okay.
So this is all about the ease of entry.
Right.
So now we're going to go to the highly complex skills and tools required to do any form of OSINT.
Right.
So the prerequisites.
Okay.
You need a computer or a smartphone.
It's to do any form of open source intelligence, you need some form of computer.
So like I said, a computer or a smartphone.
You need internet to get onto the internet, because that's where you're going to find a bulk of your information.
You're not exactly going to go down to the library and conduct any sort of valuable OSINT from a library.
Right.
Curiosity.
You have to have a sense of curiosity.
If you're curious, if you like gossip, if you like watching, you know, murder mysteries and that kind of stuff, and you want to, you know, or you watch a show that, you know, you're constantly like, oh, I think he's the killer, or he did this, or she did that.
You know, having that sense of curiosity helps your cause.
Right.
So this is a big one.
So understanding the rules of engagement.
So the typical rules of engagement are you ideally do not want to use a system that is linked to your work.
You don't want to use a system that's linked to your personal life.
You want to use something isolated.
So a lot of people use virtual machines.
I know TraceLabs has its own VM.
There's some other stuff cooking as well.
Or, you know, people don't want to use their own Facebook accounts or Instagram accounts or LinkedIn accounts, because then there's a sort of a data entry there that could lead back to you.
So you always want to use isolated systems.
And the biggest things you want to understand about rules of engagement, right, is zero touch.
It is the most simple thing, but a lot of people forget about it.
So zero touch literally means to not engage or interact with a target or people connected to the target, anything related to investigation.
So not liking anything.
If someone has their Instagram account as private, you don't follow them.
You know, it can go very wrong very quickly.
And then you are tagged in that person's life.
And if something goes wrong with that person, they're going to come looking at you.
Right.
So the main thing is zero touch.
Right.
Understanding what you want as an outcome.
So it's important to remind yourself of what you want to finish with.
What is the end result?
What the end result should look like?
Why are we doing what we're doing?
By doing that, you can stay on track.
So what I do, what I sometimes do is if I have a target, sorry I got a bit of a cold, but if I have a target, I will look at every bit of information I can find about that person, their Facebook, their LinkedIn, their Twitter, their Instagram, anything I can find.
Right.
Once I've kind of burnt up that source, I need to start looking elsewhere.
Right.
So looking at spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, partners, you know, very close friends or family.
So you'll start branching out, but you always have to remind yourself of who the target is, because you might branch out to a mother and from a mother, you go to a boyfriend.
From the boyfriend, you go to an ex-wife.
Now you're about four degrees from that person and you're not sticking to what you're looking at.
Right.
So you'll always go down those paths, but if it's leading anywhere, you just come back to the target and follow the next route.
Right.
And the last thing is understanding what you might find.
So if you're doing things like TraceLabs, you might come across some hairy stuff.
You might come across some things of violent nature, some things of sexual nature.
You know, a lot of the cases are also, what you might find.
Typically, you'll kind of know where you're going to find the rough stuff and where you're not.
It is important to be mentally prepared for that.
I'm ex-military.
I've seen some pretty interesting stuff in my life.
So I know what my level of appetite for that thing is or that kind of stuff is.
So as long as you know what you're potentially in for, you're good to go.
So going through all these steps, you know, what you need, the internet, understanding ROE, what your outcome is and what you might find.
You can see that it is actually quite, quite, quite simple.
Right.
So this is literally the ease of entry and how easy it is to get into this stuff.
It does not take much to get involved.
Right.
So, you know, what is the result of this?
Sorry, that GIF caught me there.
Right.
So the satisfaction.
What do you, you know, what are you getting out of this?
Right.
So the big thing for me is the find.
So finding that last known location of a missing person and reading an article, you know, subsequently and finding out the person was found and they're okay and that they're in a bad situation.
There is a big sense of satisfaction to me.
Also with small things.
When I find an insignificant piece of intelligence that I think is insignificant and I then corroborate it and then I realize that small information is massive.
So, for instance, we once ran a case and we were looking for a young girl that went missing and we found a picture on some guy's Facebook of her in a backseat and we did not think much of it.
Then we found another photo in another place of that car and we could manage to link her to that specific car and we knew who the owner of that car was and the photo had been taken very recently.
So we could say, like, with a strong, you know, level of certainty, this is a license plate of the car, this is where it was and this is where that potential person is.
So when you start stringing that information together, it gets really interesting and really exciting.
All right, so on the commercial side, so getting that new client, again, that new job.
So when your your efforts have led you to signing a new potential client or getting a new job, there is, you know, definite satisfaction in that.
So, you know, it's something to keep in mind.
Okay, when you know, you know.
So when you sharpen your abilities and you know what you are able to find, what help you can provide and how to protect yourself, your friends and your family, there is massive value there, right?
If I see one of my cousins or one of my, you know, one of my mothers, my mother or, you know, any other family or colleagues posting something that they shouldn't be posting, you know, posting a picture of a kid going to school and he has his uniform and this is where he goes to school and that's how old it is and this is his teacher is,
you know, then I will alert them and say, hey, you know, in a very nice way, I'll say, hey, like, you need to think about what you're posting yet.
You know, this is, you're adding risk to your life and it's, this is not safe.
And then people go, oh, but that information means nothing.
But when you string that with other information you can find, suddenly, you know, you've got a whole target package on someone that means, you know, is dear to you.
So having that knowledge is, you know , very helpful .
Okay.
Many pieces make one pretty puzzle.
So OSINT is interesting in that it's all open source.
So you find small little bits of information and as a singular piece of information, it's not much.
It doesn't lead anywhere.
It doesn't tell much of a story sometimes.
But when you piece all those things together and you build a massive puzzle or a massive picture and you realize, like, what puzzle is going down or, you know, what they portray on Instagram versus what they portray on Facebook or Twitter, I get a strong sense of satisfaction in knowing that information and relying,
like, I know the big picture here.
So with OSINT, one will find small pieces of insignificant information and when you get all those small pieces and you build it into an instant picture, that is of great value.
And then it becomes something that is actionable.
So yeah, that's something that brings a lot to me.
And I think the last piece is the knowledge.
So the knowledge of knowing.
So when you have the skill set, you know what you're able to find and how to achieve something.
You'll be surprised that when you've done this a bit and you've done some CTFs, you've taken that chance, taken a swing at doing a CTF, which I highly suggest people do, you'll find that you can use OSINT in some very interesting ways to achieve things.
Recently, I helped a guy here in South Africa that sold his Xbox on a Facebook group that was dedicated to gamers here in South Africa.
And all he had was an ID photo or ID, a copy of someone's ID.
And from that, I built a massive picture.
And I could measure the guy and say, hey, I first checked beforehand to make sure that the Xbox, in fact, was stolen and it all looked legit.
And then I sent the information.
I said, look, look, this is where you can go to the guy to get your money or get your Xbox back.
So having that knowledge brings satisfaction to me.
You know, when you're scrolling through Facebook and you've got a lot of people of varying age groups and varying backgrounds, and when you see someone post, you think to yourself, like, I know how valuable that is as intelligence, piece of intelligence.
So, you know, the knowledge brings a lot of satisfaction.
Right.
So what are the side effects?
So what can come indirectly from getting involved with OSINT?
Right.
So being a champion of operational security or personal security.
So being a champion of OPSEC and being a champion of personal security or PERSEC, right?
It allows you to stay safe and stay more protected and be more guarded about what you post.
And knowing that when you post this one thing, how that can be strung together with another piece of information to affect you in an adverse way.
So that's always of value.
But the hunger.
So, you know, you had a taste of OSINT and you, you know, you enjoyed it.
So due to that ease of entry into OSINT and then achieving some success, it is only natural to want more.
Whether it is more OSINT challenges or whether it's other challenges.
So something more technical.
Right.
So that typically leads us down to something called the intent.
So once achieving the above, one starts to learn more about security and how to find other information by various techniques, whether that be hacking or, you know, there's various ways to get information.
Right.
Although the next step is more technically challenging, the hunger and the intent is enough to push someone into that direction.
Right.
And then we get the path.
So once you had the drug, you built the hunger and have the intent.
People tend to build a path in line with security.
Not always, but it often happens.
And it happened with me.
Right.
So I evolved from OSINT into forensics challenges, into more sort of hacking CTFs or, you know, like CTFs you typically get where it's got different types of challenges.
So that led me down that path.
And from there, it led me to steganography and doing offensive security.
So popping boxes.
I am extremely novice at doing offensive security, but there is an element of huge excitement.
And those messing around on the weekend CTFs with your buddies can lead into a career.
So all by at a slow pace, you know, me personally.
From there, more formal plans evolve into things like pen testing, red teaming, social engineering, and forensics.
Like me, I want to do digital forensics and initial response one day.
Probably with my background in the military and high-risk security, you know, counterinsurgency, all that stuff, I should go into offensive security because I'll be really good at physical stuff.
I'll be really good at social engineering.
And I probably will pick up that skill set more, but I believe I'd like to go more into digital forensics.
Right.
And from the path comes the career.
So now with everything you have learned, you have added many other skills and you are doing more technical work, but all the while you are using OSINT in its many, many forms to add value to your new and evolved career.
So I'm not saying everyone that does OSINT is going to get into InfoSec, but it is a great place to start.
You know, I don't know, it does something to you.
That's why I call these, I'm using the drug references because really for me, I like, I've become addicted to it and I love it and I want to learn more from it.
All right.
So what now?
So let's feed the supply.
So going clean.
So you, you know, at least you try.
You did an OSINT challenge, you did a trace lab and you didn't do well, or that's not the problem.
Maybe you just didn't enjoy it.
Right.
So, you know, at least you gave it a shot, you tried and perhaps it was just not for you.
And that's cool.
Right.
But what can you still take from it?
So you still have that OPSEC awareness.
So no matter how in-depth you got, you learn something.
You learn to help others take the OPSEC and PERSEC.
So you've still got that understanding of, you know, maybe you've got like a hundred points on trace labs.
You learned that stringing that little piece of information to this information can mean you're vulnerable.
Right.
So at least you have that knowledge and you can protect yourselves, your friends, your colleagues and family better.
Right.
Mindfulness.
So by understanding the risks and how info can be strung together, you'll be better equipped to make better decisions related to what you post and push out on the internet.
Right.
That's, that's big.
You've, you're always going to be aware of that.
Right.
And the last part is, you know, remember the good old days.
So despite maybe taking a swing at it and not being for you, you're still going to remember certain things from it.
You know, if you did a trace labs, you always remember that one case where you found, you know, the six Facebook accounts of the certain, of the, of the, of the target.
You'll, you'll, you'll still be able to reminisce about that in a, in a positive way, hopefully.
So at least you take that away.
Right.
So you've gone down this ocean path, you've taken a few CTFs and now the bug has bit you.
Right.
So what do you do with it?
So what I did was show and tell.
So I showed my friends, I showed my family what OSINT is, what you are able to do and how that makes them vulnerable.
I've shown my mother, my father, my, you know, my cousins, you know, friends like, Hey, you know, with this little information, I can do this.
And then I get this.
And then I get that next, you know, you know, someone could be in your iCloud account, what's in your iCloud account.
And then we'll go, Oh, you know, this, that, and the other.
That helps protect them.
And also, you know, it feels cool to show someone that you've learned something new.
Right.
Next is understand the ease of entry and get involved.
So get involved with Trace Labs, get involved with other organizations, take a swing.
It can lead to new avenues of interest and potentially a new career in information security.
So whether that be through Hack the Box, Hashtag Ocean Challenges and all that kind of stuff.
Right.
Once again, I keep reiterating this.
By understanding the ease of entry, you may be more inclined to take your first shot or challenge or a CTF.
I started Hack the Box.
It was kind of fun.
And then I saw TMHC do so well at Trace Labs.
I thought, screw it, I'm just going to give it a shot .
And that's led me down this path.
So I'm grateful that I took that first shot.
Even if you come , you know, last on a CTF, at least you learn something, at least you tried and you know what, what , what's coming for you and how you can learn from that.
I went to one CTF, my first CTF at Ocean Challenges.
I did, I did all the Ocean Challenges.
I was like, what do I do now?
I can't anymore.
And I was like, forensic, let's look at forensics.
And I managed to solve two challenges with, I think it was with DERPCON.
And I was hooked.
I did something I'd never done before.
And I learned a lot out of it, right?
So the last part here is evolving to a new career.
So walk the path that Ocean takes you and learn and grow, right?
It might lead to something as simple as, I said, more mindfulness or an awareness, or it could lead down a path into information security.
If I get someone, I've got someone now that is a, you know, a chauffeur, which is great.
I used to do something similar, you know, in high-risk stuff.
And the first thing I told them is get involved at Ocean.
Like it's, it's, it's a great start, you know, and it's the one thing you can get really good at with little to no training, um, and, and the right research, right?
It's something you can really add value to when you sort of transition into InfoSec.
All right.
So summary and takeaways, or takeaway, as I'm going to have shortly.
Right.
So there's a lot of reiteration here, but that's what a summary is, right?
So get involved with Ocean in whatever form.
You are probably doing it already.
Take a, take a swing, take a stab.
Um, if you, if you, if you're too scared, ask.
You can DM me.
My DMs are open on Twitter, right?
If you want to know something, message me.
So you can message Rag, you can message, you know, Cyber Viking, you can message Stu.
He's a busy guy, but he makes time for everyone, right?
Ask us about this and say, Hey, I want to do Trace Labs or whatever.
Um, I don't know if I can do it.
Most of the people I've had on my team that I did Trace Labs with, have had little to no experience in Ocean.
I think when we came seventh, two of the guys in there had never done Ocean, right?
It is, they had that curious nature.
They had that basic level of understanding that I mentioned earlier, and we did well.
We came, we came seventh, you know, and that's why, that's my claim to fame in Ocean, right?
Right, scared?
Remind yourself of the ease of entry and take a swing.
I know I am like beating on this drum, but it, I remember how anxious I was to take part in my first CTF.
And after I'd done that, I was so happy because it led me like, what, you know, what CTFs coming up this week?
What's going on there?
You know, I want to try this.
Ooh, Stego, you know, Forensics.
It can really lead you down an interesting path.
Right, remember the rules of engagement.
If anything, just remember, don't get involved with the targets.
Don't touch anything, right?
It'll keep you safe.
Right, tell your friends, your family, your colleagues about Ocean.
Show them how you find information.
Do Ocean challenges on them.
We do a lot on Hack South, the server that I run.
And it quickly shows you how vulnerable you can be.
And by doing this, you can help your family, you can help your colleagues, and it can really hold you in good stead.
Right, and follow the path where Ocean takes you.
And I've said this a few times, but, you know, I wanted to drum on this.
If you like it, keep learning, involve your skills.
Something that I did recently, it's fair enough, I can find Facebook accounts, I can find, you know, all sorts of different accounts of someone.
But then something I wanted to work on was geolocation.
And me and some friends of mine, a friend of mine showed me what he was doing as far as geolocation goes, and I found it interesting, and I started doing my own things.
You know, getting a random photo of a website, and then trying to geolocate where that place is, and trying to find tactics that usually work, it can help you find stuff.
Now my skills with geolocation have become better.
You know, if you look at Benjamin's talk earlier, I'm not good with mountain ranges, because I'm thinking like, damn, like there's a lot of mountain ranges, how am I going to know where to look?
But building up that skill set, I know will help me in the future, and it will lead me to you know, new paths.
I learn new things.
So, you know, I don't think you truly ever know everything there is to know about OSINT, and the cool thing is in OSINT these days, there are actually professional paid commercial jobs that are dedicated to OSINT, or some new ones about OSINT.
You know, in recruiting, I've spoken to a few Intel analysts that do open source intelligence for, you know, law enforcement, or for defense, or whatever.
Don't be afraid to learn new things.
Like I said, I've evolved into Stego, I've evolved into forensics, you know, I've signed up for a few courses.
All those other things can add value to you as well.
So consider that, you know, if the bug is buggy, as I mentioned, you know, look what else is out there, speak to the people in the community, tweet something out, say, hey, I've done this, I love that, what else is there?
You'd be shocked with how much out there is out there to learn.
All right, links to attribution, I just pulled something directly off Wikipedia, there it is, open source intelligence.
Okay, I think that's me done.
I'll take any questions if there are any.
And I just wanted to give a special shout out to Stu, Greg, and Viking, and Alan as well, Alan LeBlanc.
They sort of, they helped me, they led me down this path of OSINT.
And it's taken me down a very interesting path.
I'm excited to see where it goes.
And I'm very, I'm very thankful and appreciative for what they've brought to me and how helpful they've been.
And I hope that one day I can help other people and inspire other people down this path.
But that's me, I'm out.
Great talk, absolutely great talk.
Yeah, I agree.
We're both jumping into talks here to see how great it was.
It was amazing, right?
It was absolutely fantastic.
I guess from my side, you know, it was really good to hear, you know, how you went about kind of getting into OSINT.
Also, we know this story because we hang out on TMHC quite a lot.
And it was really good to hear firsthand the kind of your learning experience and learning curve.
And this takes us into a couple of questions as well we've got.
So Matthew Taylor asks, candidate vetting, how far is too far?
Okay, so we, you have to remember the legalities of what you're doing.
Like, you can't not hire someone because of their political opinion, right?
But you get a funny feeling about someone and you do a bit of search and you find out they have a federal indictment.
Right?
Some companies, you know, if it's an old federal indictment, we know some big people in this industry that are federal indictments that have spent time in prison that have managed to to do big things in infosec, right?
So it's, one needs to know where the line is.
I'm not going to, you know, go into someone's, you know, naughty habits on the weekend.
I just want to know, like, is this person going to be chaos in the workplace?
Or are they able to keep their stuff to what, you know, the crazy stuff they do to the weekends?
It's important.
But yeah, I mean, you intrinsically need to know where the where the line is.
Like I said, I will very rarely do it.
But if I suddenly get a funny feeling about someone, I'll look into it.
I'm like, oh, you know, this, this person is homophobic, or they're misogynistic, or they sound like that.
Then I'm like, is this really someone I want to work with?
And is this someone I really want to send to a company?
But like I said, it happens really, it's only when, you know, there's some red flag in a call.
Yeah.
Okay, next question is by Nettles123.
Can you recommend some templates, apps that you use to help keep information organized and make it easier to summarize and present later?
I am pretty terrible at keeping organized.
One thing I know there's this, Hunchly is something that a lot of people use that I think I believe was sponsoring the event.
I myself have not used Hunchly before, but I'd like to.
Some people use, I think it's called Cherrytree.
It's like Notepad, but it's, you know, you can have like different tabs.
So with us, Hacksouth, when we do TraceLabs, we'll run a Trello.
And we'll have the 10 point systems, you know, down a board.
Typically, I think how it is on TraceLabs.
And then as we will dump information into the CTF, we'll keep a record there.
You've just got to find what works best for you.
But I think Cherrytree and Trello is a great place to start.
But I believe you, Stu and Rag and Viking have set up actually like a, not a platform, but you guys have set up something where you've put all these kind of resources together.
And that's probably a good place to start.
Yeah, we typically use like Discord, is the honest answer, what we use.
Yeah, it's pretty good.
Yeah, we also set up our own Discord setup just for TraceLabs.
And, you know, we'll have different categories for each case.
And we'll dump information in there and keep resources and keep things ticking over.
So yeah, that's a good reminder.
Yeah, it's really good.
And you've got one more question.
Actually, that's a couple more.
So hopefully we'll get a few more.
Actually, we're actually pretty much out of time almost.
But last very, very quick question before we get kicked off.
Do you feel that cyber threat intel jobs require prior military background?
Require prior military experience?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, not really.
No.
I've worked some threat intel.
I wish I had more threat intel roles to recruit.
I find it a very interesting place.
Someone actually recently told me when I told them I want to go into digital forensics.
I told them what I want to do and attach a bit of offensive stuff.
And they're like, Charlie, you know, you actually want to go into threat intel.
That's what you're looking at.
But no, I don't think having a prior military background is a necessity.
Depending on what the org is, what the clearance requirements are, sure, there might be a necessity for having that military background.
But no, I think each, you know, whether you're military or not military, you're going to bring a background, you're going to bring a level of experience and different people will tackle problems in different ways.
So, you know, from the military, great.
If you're not, that's also fine.
All right.
Well, sadly, we've run out of time for this talk.
Amazing talk, Angus.
Always good hanging out with you anyway.
But that was a really, really good talk.
Thank you for sharing everything.
And thank you, everyone, for listening.
And we'll have our next talk in approximately five minutes.
So thank you very much, everyone.
No problem.
I'll drop this all on GitHub and I'll be on Discord for any questions if need be.
All right.
Brilliant.
Thank you.