Kirby Plessas is an OSINT pioneer, US military veteran, business owner, board member, is OSC certified and podcast host. Kirby was an Arabic linguist in the military who started sharing what she knew with team members in a newsletter and it grew from there. She is the founder of the Plessas Experts Network which offers training, classes and webinars in OSINT investigations. She also co-hosts the OSINT Cocktail podcast where they talk about investigations and techniques seen in movies and televis...
May 26, 2025•41 min•Season 5Ep. 11
Craig Taylor is the founder and CEO of CyberHoot a security awareness company that focuses on positive reinforcement and gamification. Craig studied psychology and used that knowledge when creating CyberHoot, which he offers for free. Craig also set up a challenge specifically for listeners of the Layer 8 Podcast, if you'd like to test your ability to identify a phish and the parts of a phish quickly. It's even free! You can try that out here: https://cps.cyberhoot.com/hootphish-challenge/?hash=...
May 12, 2025•42 min•Season 5Ep. 10
Tim Farmer is the OSINT Training Lead for Dark Blue at CACI . He performs investigations along with teaching OSINT classes with a focus on the deep and dark web. (Don't know the difference? We discuss that in this episode.) Tim has his own podcast with Chris, titled The OSINT Output . Tim has achieved the OSC certification from Osmosis Academy and will be presenting at the Layer 8 Conference this year with a talk titled "Deanonymizing Dark Web Hidden Services: Capitalizing on User Mistakes and Q...
Apr 28, 2025•41 min•Season 5Ep. 9
Dorota Kozlowska is a social engineer and penetration tester for Black Hills Information Security . She has her own podcast which can be found on Twitch and YouTube and recently presented at the Disobey conference in Finland. On this episode, she talks about how to get into social engineering as a job, some techniques for elicitation, what skills one needs to be a social engineer and the all-important sympathy vs. empathy....
Apr 14, 2025•35 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Sho Luv, aka Leon Johnson is a ninja, a hacker, a penetration tester and a computer security expert. Leon has performed all types of testing engagements and has mentored many other aspiring pentesters. On this episode, Leon talks about what it takes to be a tester along with some of his own stories of social engineering engagements and his thoughts on being a Black man while doing covert entry engagements. If you want to try your hand at the hacker box Leon created, titled Mr. Robot, have at it:...
Mar 31, 2025•44 min•Season 5Ep. 7
How does a man living in England trace the history of Compton, California and the evolution of gangs across the country? And then evolve to tracking financial crimes? By using his OSINT skills! In this episode, Brett Redman the Head of Intelligence at Blackdot Solutions takes us through where he started with tracking this information and also some discussion of OSINT differences between the US and UK, with an emphasis on investigational ethics....
Mar 17, 2025•42 min•Season 5Ep. 6
Olie Brown is a self-described hacker and the creator of the penetration testing company CC Labs . In this episode, Olie tells us of some social engineering exploits he has pulled off with some very simple techniques. He also stresses the social in social engineering with his tips on how people can get started and how to get better at social engineering. He also talks about why he is constantly learning and hasn't slowed down....
Mar 03, 2025•49 min•Season 5Ep. 5
Dmitry Danilov , aka Soxoj is an OSINT investigator and CPO for Social Links . In this episode, we talk about his Substack where he shares his methodology and his incredibly helpful " 4P Method " of doing investigations. We also talked about some of the tools he works with and created, which you can find in his github: https://github.com/soxoj https://soxoj.com/ https://t.me/soxoj_insides https://github.com/soxoj/maigret Presentation at LeHack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yQRf0Mx-hc https:/...
Feb 17, 2025•40 min•Season 5Ep. 4
Jeff Tomkiewicz , aka The Gh0stface Killer is a social engineer who is employed but a health services company. He will also be teaching a pretexting workshop at the Layer 8 Conference! You can find out more about that here: https://layer8conference.com/training-at-layer-8-conference-2025/ In this episode, we learn how Jeff moved from the military to becoming a social engineer where he does red team engagements for his company. He also penned a great article about social engineering and pretextin...
Feb 03, 2025•43 min•Season 5Ep. 3
My OSINT Training is a company created by Griffin ( @hatless1der ) Glynn and Micah ( @webbreacher ) Hoffman. Their goal was to create affordable high quality OSINT training, and they'll be offering that at the Layer 8 Conference in June! You can sign up today for their class! In this episode, we also spoke about the National Child Protection Task Force ( NCPTF ) and how Micah and Griffin conduct investigations along with how others can help and how ethics play a huge part in their investigations...
Jan 20, 2025•47 min•Season 5Ep. 2
Get your ticket to the Layer 8 Conference on June 14, in Boston! In this episode, we're joined by Nico Dekens , aka Dutch_OSINTGuy where he talks about lessons in OSINT including the value of operational security, ethics and classes he teaches. He also tells us about his 5W1H method of performing an investigation. We also discussed some blog posts he wrote for ShadowDragon , including one about OSINT on people in heightened emotional states ....
Jan 06, 2025•46 min•Season 5Ep. 1
Aidan Raney is the founder of Farnsworth Intelligence , an OSINT company that focuses on due diligence investigations, among others. Aidan freely shares content and tools, has been a volunteer with Trace Labs , teaches OSINT and OpSec. He presented at both BSidesSF and ShmooCon about " Catching Some Phisherman " where he exposed a large phishing organization. Aidan has experience with using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in OSINT and has also helped to catch vishing scammers....
Nov 25, 2024•40 min•Season 4Ep. 22
Brian Harris from the Covert Access Team is a social engineer, a physical pentester and a member of the black team . If you've heard of blue team, purple team and red team but not black team, you can hear what that is about in this episode! Brian explains why all businesses should have their physical access tested, regardless of whether they believe the tester would be successful. Also, is it fair to test the third party cleaning crew during a test? We talk about this and a lot more!...
Nov 11, 2024•45 min•Season 4Ep. 21
Nathaniel Fried is the CEO of OSINT Industries . He's also one of the founding members and current chair of UK OSINT , a non-profit public meetup group. In this episode, we talk about ways to perform OSINT with only a single selector, such as an email address, a phone number or a username. We also discussed how he discovered that Donetsk was using western-based IT tools, in spite of sanctions. Nathaniel walked through this investigation with his OSINT methods. He explained his thoughts on how to...
Oct 28, 2024•47 min•Season 4Ep. 20
Matt Linton ( @0xMatt )is a Googler and former NASA employee and red teamer. He has some opinions on the way we do phishing testing today with comparisons to how fire safety evolved. Even better, he offers solid solutions on how we can do better phishing testing so that people better understand the expectations of them and to still keep the enterprise protected. In this episode, we discuss a blog post that he wrote for Google. You can read the blog post here: https://security.googleblog.com/2024...
Oct 14, 2024•36 min•Season 4Ep. 19
Jennifer is a hacker, a social engineer, a locksmith and a private investigator. In this episode, we talk about how she got into each of those fields and about her path to being a part of her company's red team. She has some great social engineering stories including where she's climbing through a ceiling!
Sep 30, 2024•1 hr•Season 4Ep. 18
Phil Eil is an investigative journalist who has written for publications such as Vice, Huffington Post, the Boston Globe and the Providence Phoenix. But there was always one story he wanted to write. In his new book, Prescription for Pain , Phil documents the story of Dr. Paul Volkman, a midwestern physician who was convicted of distribution of a controlled substance resulting in death, plus additional charges. Phil tells us about the story but also describes the various less-common investigativ...
Sep 16, 2024•41 min•Season 4Ep. 17
This is the second part of a two-part podcast episode with Alethe Denis . If you missed the first part, you'll want to go back and listen to that first as this episode picks up, mid-story where Alethe has just caught the eye of a security guard during a social engineering engagement. Can she evade the guard or will the job come to an end? Alethe is a senior security consultant with Bishop Fox , has given presentations to multiple conferences, including a keynote on redteaming . Alethe was also t...
Sep 02, 2024•39 min•Season 4Ep. 16
Alethe Denis is the first ever three-time guest to the Layer 8 Podcast. When Alethe comes on, we can swap stories for hours. And we did! This is part 1 of a two-part episode, as Alethe had so many great stories to share. For this episode, she talks her way into buildings, tells us how she prepares her OSINT and when she knows it's time to go into the building. Check back in two weeks for part 2!
Aug 19, 2024•46 min•Season 4Ep. 15
For this episode, we're joined by Cynthia Navarro and Bret Anderson from OsmosisCon . They are the two people that head up the annual OSINT conference in Las Vegas. The conference will be October 20-22 and can be attended in person or remotely. Cynthia and Bret tell us about the origins of Osmosis, the certification they offer and we also talk about some methods, ethics and share some fun investigation stories....
Aug 05, 2024•50 min•Season 4Ep. 14
Andreas Heideck , the CEO of the Germany-based Impossible Security , joined the show to tell some incredible social engineering stories. The part that is different about his stories is the simplicity of his pretexts and thought process. As we tend to overthink these engagements, Andreas shows us how to stay in the moment, choose pretexts that make sense, are very simple and very successful....
Jul 22, 2024•47 min•Season 4Ep. 13
This episode is a great discussion with Justin Seitz ( @jms_dot_py ) and Kennedy Chappell ( @kcath23 ) of Permanent Record Research . They also write the free Substack newsletter https://www.bullshithunting.com/ along with its fun weekend edition, For the Weekend Warriors, Weirdos & Whackjobs, where you can get even more fun insight into the work they do and the lives they lead. In this episode, Justin and Kennedy talk about how they "unf**k" things like junk science and pseudo-experts in co...
Jul 08, 2024•50 min•Season 4Ep. 12
Note: This episode contains language that would be considered not safe for work (NSFW) and around some children. Bluma Janowitz, aka @x25Princess is a social engineering instructor and one of the original phone phreaking hackers. She has also worked as a phone sex operator and as a dominatrix. Her work in these areas, as well as her own personal survival, has taught her the social engineering skills she uses today. She also wrote some interesting blog posts about various aspects of social engine...
Jun 24, 2024•52 min•Season 4Ep. 11
Alex Lozano is the founder and CEO of the Barcelona-based Cibergy and is a professor of OSINT at the University of Autonoma de Barcelona. In this episode, Alex talks about the role of OSINT in corporations and businesses. How it can enhance the business and also show trends and potential threats. We also discussed the future of OSINT and how Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be able to help and where it might come up short....
Jun 10, 2024•40 min•Season 4Ep. 10
At the Layer 8 Podcast, we aim to get a global perspective on social engineering and OSINT topics. For this episode, we spoke with Ajaka Shamsudeen, also known as @Mydeen4u on Twitter. Ajaka is a part of the SE awareness and education community in Nigeria and here he shares his perspective of the state of social engineering in Nigeria. Ajaka is also an alumnus of Cyblack , an organization that is building the next generation of Black and African cybersecurity talent....
May 27, 2024•33 min•Season 4Ep. 9
Hervé is the creator of the non-profit and non-governmental organization OpenFacto in France. This organization teaches investigational skills to journalists to help them find the truth in facts. We also talk about using OSINT for good and in this episode, Hervé tells a story about how he did exactly that and very likely saved lives with one specific investigation and how he performed it. OpenFacto offers their training to all French-speaking individuals and more information can be found on thei...
May 13, 2024•46 min•Season 4Ep. 8
Bex Markwick joins us today to tell us what she feels is wrong about the way we do phishing testing today. We'll talk about some of the areas where those might not go in the right direction and why, but also how we can do them better and what we should be focusing on. Bex has presented twice at PancakesCon and gave a keynote presentation at BSides Basingstoke . You can find all of Bex's presentations at https://infobex.co.uk/speaking/...
Apr 29, 2024•49 min•Season 4Ep. 7
Tom Hocker is the Director at Trace Labs . Trace Labs is a non-profit organization who crowdsources OSINT skills from the public to find information and clues on people in missing persons cases. As mentioned in this episode, you can get more information about Trace Labs, get in contact with Tom and jump into a Search Party all by joining their Discord channel here: https://discord.gg/tracelabs
Apr 15, 2024•48 min•Season 4Ep. 6
Chris Pritchard is a UK-based social engineer with Lares Consulting. He has accessed some of the most secure facilities, sometimes seemingly too easily. In this episode, Chris (aka @Ghostie_) talks about what was his process to access seemingly secure facilities like airports and casinos. He also gives his thoughts on dealing with the adrenaline rush of getting in and also has advice on how to get started in the industry.
Apr 01, 2024•46 min•Season 4Ep. 5
Rae, aka @Wondersmith_Ra e is back! After chatting about maritime OSINT in episode 75, Rae came back to discuss her book " Deep Dive - Exploring the Real World Value of Open Source Intelligence " and to talk about what skills or mindset is important in the OSINT world. We also talked about how to practice your OSINT skills in a realistic way by using Kase Scenarios , a learning site she built along with Espen Ringstad....
Mar 18, 2024•41 min•Season 4Ep. 4
