All right, thanks everybody for showing up.
I know that everybody is probably anxious to get down to the closing ceremonies and all that stuff.
So we had the OSINT CTF contest today from 1030 to 1230.
And this is the winners panel where we kind of celebrate the winners and do a little bit of a wrap up.
So if you... is there anybody here who did not compete in the OSINT CTF?
I see a couple.
Okay.
Okay, good.
All right.
Welcome.
Well, definitely.
Hopefully we'll change that next year when we come back, hopefully, and you'll compete.
Right?
That's the idea.
So we'll... so for those who raised your hand, just to explain what is an OSINT CTF, because that sounds like a lot of acronyms, the OSINT stands for Open Source Intelligence.
And this is basically information out on the internet that can be found for free.
And a CTF is a Capture the Flag contest, right?
And specifically, our Capture the Flag contest is what they call a Jeopardy-style contest, where there are questions on a scoreboard and you look for the answers and you post them.
The difference between our CTF and most CTFs, most of them, the flags that you submit are like random characters, those kind of things, like some kind of cypher or whatever.
Ours are actual real information about real people, right?
Real targets who happen to volunteer their participation, so we like to call them volun-targets, right?
Making up those words.
So OSINT CTF has existed for about 10 years.
We started it in B-Sides, Atlanta, which is where the CG Silver's team is from and currently located.
And we feature it at different conferences.
We've run it at DerbyCon, for those folks that remember DerbyCon.
We run it at a, what I like to call a sister conference of this one, called GRR-Con in Grand Rapids, other side of the lake.
Excellent conference, by the way, and we hope to be running it this year as well.
Yeah, next.
There we go.
So why would you want to play the OSINT CTF?
Well, first and foremost, it's a great learning opportunity, right?
You can kind of stretch your skills on performing OSINT.
It really can open your eyes to what information's out there about each one of us out online.
It is a way to develop skills that are definitely necessary in not just cybersecurity, but other areas in business, right?
Being able to research information on the internet and find it quickly can be very valuable in the business world.
And of course, it's a lot of fun, right?
After this contest today, someone literally walked by me and was like, dude, this is amazing.
The expression on the face is like, okay, wow, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Right, awesome.
All right, so how do you play, right?
So it's pretty simple.
A lot of CTFs have restrictive environments that have to set up.
Our environment for this CTF is the internet, right?
So fortunately, we have somebody else maintaining that for us, right?
I don't have to deal with that.
We have one login per team, so you kind of share the login.
We're not big on a lot of rules, so each challenge has points and each challenge also specifies the number of guesses.
And depending on the nature of the flag, we might limit the number of guesses.
And we sort of scale it to difficulty.
We try to do that.
One of the few rules we do have is we don't allow contestants to use paid services, paid search services, because everybody knows there are data brokers out there who gather up all this type of information.
You can literally pay for them, hit a button, and answer all the questions, right?
Not a lot of fun, not very fair, right?
We also forbid contestants to contact the targets in any way.
This is not a social engineering contest, per se.
It's really about OSINT, right?
And so voluntargets are warned that people may come up to them and ask them questions, and hopefully they don't answer any of that.
And format matters.
So many times contestants will have the right answer, but they're just not typing it in the right format.
So we encourage people to come up to our booth, and we're happy to help you with format.
So if you had any issues when you were competing this year or you plan to next year with formatting, don't hesitate to come ask us.
It's okay.
That's not cheating.
That's good sportsmanship, right?
All right, so first and foremost, I'd like to get a round of applause for our three winning teams.
Please, yes.
Thank you.
And I'm going to call up the captain of each team.
So the third place, Zach's Angels.
Do we have the captain of Zach's Angels?
If you'll come up on stage.
Zach's Angels.
There we go.
Come on up.
Have a seat.
All right.
And I'm going to go ahead and give you your prize pack, if that's all right.
All right?
And we've signed this specifically with the third, all right?
So you might want to keep the bag as a collector's item, all right?
Excellent.
So there's a bag of swag in there and as well as a Hack5OMG USB protector, right?
So you can plug that into your computer and if you want to test out a USB to see if it's safe to use, you plug it in and that thing will alarm if it's not safe to use.
So yes.
No, have a seat.
Yeah, relax, relax.
We're going to hear from you in just a moment.
And second place, we have the UWW CyberHawks.
Who's our captain from the CyberHawks?
Come on up.
All right.
Excellent.
Once again, a signature bag with second on it to frame and put it over your fireplace.
There we go.
And in that bag of goodies, we also have a Hack5 SharkJack cable, right?
So handy pen testing tool or just fun to play pranks with, right?
So I won't go into that.
That'll be fun.
All right.
And then finally, the first place team, which is one of my favorite team names, LemonPepperWet, which I would love to hear the story behind, but let's give them a hand.
LemonPepperWet.
We'll have the captain come up.
All right.
And by the way, as you can see, it was pretty close with the points, right?
It was right down to the last few minutes, which is surprising because sometimes, you know, it kind of...
we have a point spread.
All right.
So in addition to a personalized bag with first place, there's some swag in there and also a Flipper Zero, right?
That was our first place prize.
As well as in the closing ceremonies, we'll be presenting you with a lifetime badge as well that you have to share with your team.
So yeah, let the struggles begin, right?
All right.
Excellent.
So one more time, let's hear it for the winners, please.
Thank you.
I know they worked really hard.
We watched them, you know, from afar.
We watched them with their heads down.
All right.
Next, I'd like to recognize our voluntargets.
Now to be a voluntarget, you sort of have to be willing to put yourself out there and be a little bit vulnerable because people are going to be looking into your life, right?
The first time we ran this contest, I was a voluntarget, and I tell you, I was walking around and people were finding stuff that I didn't even remember existed, all right?
Yes, I would have been more tame in my youth had I known I was going to be a voluntarget, but it's good stuff.
So we have our voluntargets, Dustin Haywood and Rebecca Jo Jones.
Please give them a hand as well, all right?
And they're with us, by the way, here, so we can ask them questions as well.
So we'll move right on.
In fact, in the first question that I have for our winner panel here, if you guys have any specific questions for our voluntargets, maybe a flag you were trying to get, that you were trying to confirm, or anything like that.
Does anybody have any questions for our targets?
Wonderful.
So I had actually asked this probably two and a half minutes after the CTF ended, what the varsity sport Dustin played in high school was.
That was my question too.
Because we found the high school, and we found the list of varsity sports, but Taekwondo was not on the list of varsity sports.
Right.
So that's not currently a varsity sport, right?
Correct.
Ah.
Tricky.
And so your question...
I was kind of reiterating myself.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
That happens, like, right after the contest, right?
And we're trying to kind of capture that.
But were there any other questions for our targets that, like, maybe something you were just trying to get and you just couldn't get?
I mean, yeah, a couple.
I mean, we saw Dustin as soon as the competition ended, and we kind of, like, we, like, raced towards you to ask that, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
If you remember some of those, yeah, we'd love to hear the answer again.
Why did you change your name?
Oh, you want me to ask Joe that?
Joe, yeah, well, Joe, why did you change your name?
Yeah, yeah.
That's a little confusing.
So, yeah, so I legally changed my name last year, and I blew it all the way up down to my birth certificate.
And I changed my name because my parents and I didn't get along really well.
And if you found my mom, you found all of the court records tied to her, and I was messed up in that as well.
It was financial fraud against me, actually, that she ended up getting nailed for as well.
And so, finally, I got adult money, and I decided, hey, guess what?
I'm going to change my name because her name was Gerilyn, my name was Joellen.
And then also, as these guys proved, no one ever said it right, ever.
And so after 42 years, I was like, screw this, so I changed my name.
And before that, I hadn't really gone by Joellen in about 20 years, so there's not a lot of trace of that.
So how did you guys like that?
That's my question for you.
How easy was that to find?
You know, I was looking into your mom, and I was like, there's no way that I could imagine the court records being involved.
So all of these sites, like, you know, they ask you, do you think this person had any, you know, convictions or misdemeanors?
I just clicked no, and then all these tools will ask you to pay if you go to court.
Oh yeah , there was a lot of court convictions.
That's why it took so long.
But yeah, I was just curious.
And then my name and her name were so close, so I get a lot of, I still get creditors calling for her for me.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Very good.
So any other questions for our targets?
Yeah.
I was going to ask, did you have a MySpace way back in 2000?
That's a good question.
Maybe.
Did you find it?
Accidentally.
Could you reset the password for us?
If we had an extra 30 minutes, I was going to dig into it because we were looking into your sports, and I thought maybe I could find something, but...
No, I was actually goth, and so I didn't want to associate with any jock.
So I'm going to fall off of that.
Nice.
Anti-jock MySpace.
Yeah, exactly.
I think one exists, but I'm 43, so I would have been kind of in a weird spot to get one because it would have been, I would have been a little too old for it, but then I adopted Facebook, so...
Excellent.
It's not a question, but I do want to say that picking someone from Canada with significantly better privacy laws is kind of cheating, but...
He volunteered.
He volunteered, okay.
What question was the hardest for you guys to figure out?
I'd say for me personally, it was just the ham radio, only because of the Canadian aspect.
I was sitting there searching the U.S.
site, and then it dawned on me, because I recognized early on the Canadian piece, I just forgot.
And I hear I'm going through the U.S.
records, clicking through page after page on my phone, because I did this on my phone.
And yeah, so I'm sitting on a little screen on not a mobile optimized site, and then it tried the Canadian one, and I instantly got it then.
But it was just like, oh yeah, don't think outside of just the U.S.
Which question was the hardest for all of you?
I think maybe the date of your wedding, the exact date of your wedding?
Yeah, people didn't actually get that one.
Oh, they did?
Yeah.
It was a typo.
It was a typo, so what we did is we changed it to the correct answer, and anybody who answered it correctly, we went through and gave them credit.
So you may have gotten some surprise points in the middle of the game, and you're like, okay, take them.
I assume no one figured out my bonus questions on it?
No.
Yeah, no one figured out Taekwondo, sorry.
Underground?
Oh, yeah.
I was trying to look into that.
I couldn't find any profiles or anything.
So we got her full name, I think, but then we didn't get...
Yeah.
She was listed as the photographer?
Yeah , yeah.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, that article was honestly a goldmine, because that got us the high school and her nickname and some other stuff, but there was like three minutes left, so we couldn't get the undergrad degree.
She does have a high school, but it's very locked down.
Okay.
I did find a Twitter account for your mom, I think.
Oh, mom has a Twitter account?
No.
We're going after the moms, dude.
Oh, for Rebecca's mom?
Well, so it was made and all the tweets were back from 2014.
There was only five of them.
One of them looked like she was trying to respond to an email.
So maybe.
There were 14 followers.
Yeah.
You found it too?
You didn't tell us.
We were estranged in 2013, so pretty much I don't know what happened after that.
Is there anything we found that you guys didn't expect us to find?
I don't know what you found, so...
Yeah, that's a good point.
Okay, I didn't know if they saw it all.
I'm pretty
due here.
Sure.
I figured maybe something like, you know, if there was, what was your undergrad?
What was that?
That might be a little difficult.
And non-profit management.
Yeah.
I think the limited attempts.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, I was going to say, did we find the full-time job for her?
No.
Yeah, your first full-time job.
I guess we'll never know.
Did you have that listed as, like, an interest in Facebook?
There was, like, a bunch of companies that you were following and we were trying to piece it together.
Okay, never mind then.
All right, no chance then.
No chance.
No.
Nope.
That was a long time ago.
Oh, okay.
Right.
That was 27 years ago.
I think the limited attempts kind of affected some of the questions, where it was, like, what is the last four digits of your first phone number?
Where finding a phone number is not difficult, but getting the exact first one...
Really?
Oh, man, she's just roasting us up here.
So we did.
We did.
Yeah.
Oh, we did.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, okay, the whole joke the whole time we were doing this is they would be like, I got it.
And I'm like, I just didn't know that was a question.
But I did see that, like, the two numbers being...
I put 5355.
Yeah, it should be something like that.
Yeah, only a few were mobile.
And only a few were actually first, too.
Because some of them were...
Thank you for re-enabling it.
Yeah, yeah.
Because we've had voluntarians do that, and it really kind of messes the game up.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
I think we have a question from the audience here.
I know we're getting short on time, and we don't want to run into the close-up or the, you know, the final thing.
Closing ceremonies.
I knew it had close in the name, but yeah, if you can yell out your question.
Yeah .
Right.
Interesting.
Yeah, yeah.
I've seen that where the person's profile itself is locked down, but because they've reacted to other people's posts that are not locked down, you find it that way.
Yeah, that's very clever.
And another question.
Yes.
I'm sorry.
Yes.
Ginny Bourbon.
Yeah.
Ginny Bourbon.
Yeah.
Yeah, it could have been ancestry.com.
Yeah, excellent.
So we have a question in the back as well.
Oh, okay.
You have a question up here?
Yep.
Yeah.
I mean, no, I don't think that...
It's hard to say.
I don't think the web scraping capabilities of it would have been able to pull anything that we weren't.
Right.
We used it.
We used ChatGPT's deep research to try to find Dustin's wife's name.
Okay.
So ChatGPT was helpful?
Moderately.
Not really.
Yeah.
I mean, it didn't get us any questions.
Right.
Yeah.
I thought you had a cool technique, if you want to bring it up real quick, for getting someone's birthday exactly, like day, month, year.
For the dad's birthday?
Yeah.
So what we did is we had the month and year, like true people search or past people search, of date of birth.
So you can go to the county elections board and just look up, verify your voter registration with just your name and date of birth.
But we only had the month and year, so you just put in the first, second, third, fourth, and just keep looking up until it says, okay, you have a valid voter record.
Excellent.
So you brute force the county voter registration records.
I love it.
You know, you could probably script that.
Yeah.
It was in that moment where we were like, we could pop a vote.
Yeah.
Are we?
Yeah.
People have problems figuring out by branch and villager.
Everyone.
Yes, everyone.
We got it.
We figured it out, but it was after, like, we'd had too many submissions, and then I was just like, oh, it's this right here, isn't it?
And then we realized we'd used up all our submissions.
That was the most frustrating one.
We found it right away, and then we're like, the next year is too easy.
That's what we're doing.
Certainly.
And then we spent, like, another half hour, and then we're like, no, that was it.
Our submission was four letters off.
We put core instead of cadre, I think.
Oh, okay.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yep.
That darned old internet.
It's so picky.
All right.
Excellent.
So I know we've got, like, one minute left.
So really appreciate you guys.
The questions were amazing.
We'll have to do that feedback where we do this question first, and we don't need any more questions, right?
Sounds like it.
Excellent.
So if you go to the end, just click on through.
Just want to let everybody know, yeah, thank you so much for participating, to the winners and everybody who participated.
Hopefully we'll be back next year.
And definitely, if you have a company event or you know someone who has a company event where you think this event would be entertaining and fun for them and educational, please let us know.
Reach out, because we love doing it.
Corporate events are a lot of fun with this kind of thing.
All right.
Thank you very much.
And please, one more hand for our winners panel.
Thanks so much.
All right.
Excellent.
All right.
We'll see you at the closing ceremonies.