Layer 8 Podcast

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 investigative (OSINT) tools that he used to tell the story.

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 the featured guest on one of the most popular episodes of Darknet Diaries.

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!

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.

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.

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 courtrooms. Kennedy also talked about how she has helped friends by doing some OSINT on their online dating lives. Justin also talks about the importance of getting an investigation right, especially when you feel in your gut that you have it wrong.

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 engineering and rapport building, which can be found at https://blumajanowitz.com/?blog=y

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.

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.

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,

OpenFacto offers their training to all French-speaking individuals and more information can be found on their site at https://openfacto.fr/