Layer 8 Podcast

For this episode, we welcome Nicole Beckwith. Nicole is a Staff Cyber Intel Analyst with GE Aviation. She previously worked in law enforcement and was tasked with going undercover into the world of sex work. She played the role of a sex worker and explains all the background and research that went into it, learning the language, the acronyms, the signal words and ways to protect herself in the job. She also tells a second story of a night when one unsuspecting person crossed paths with Nicole and other social engineers and inadvertently began an interview for PornHub. 

In this episode, we talk with Phillip Wylie. Phillip is a former professional wrestler turned hacker and now teacher, and an ambassador to the Innocent Lives Foundation. Please donate today on Phillip's page! Phillip works as an offensive security instructor for INE, he created the Pwn School, co-authored The Pentester's Blueprint with Kim Crawley which he also turned into a conference presentation, and also co-hosts the podcast The Uncommon Journey with Alyssa Miller and Chloe Messdaghi. Phillip tells the lessons he imparts on his students, getting into pentesting as well as the crossover of social engineering into his professions in jewelry sales and professional wrestling. Oh, and did you hear he wrestled a bear?

For this episode, we speak with @DeviantOllam who runs both the Core Group and Red Team Alliance. Deviant is also the author of two books, Practical Lock Picking: A Physical Penetration Tester's Training Guide and Keys to the Kingdom: Impressioning, Privilege Escalation, Bumping, and Other Key-Based Attacks Against Physical Locks. Today, Deviant tells us three stories of covert entry, including much of his strategy, tips, techniques and the social engineering that goes into an engagement. He also tells us of the most difficult building he has ever had to enter and what made it so difficult for him.

For this episode, we talk with Ryan MacDougall, the Chief Operating Officer at Social-Engineer.org and Curt Klump, a Human Risk Analyst, also at Social-Engineer.org. They tell two stories of using OSINT during social engineering engagements. In Ryan's, he shows how sometimes no matter how deep you dig, it might not be enough. In Curt's story, he tells us about ways that he was able to use OSINT to find a ghost. 

Curt and Ryan also join us to talk about the upcoming Human Hacking Conference on March 11th to 13th, 2021. If you sign up now, use the Promo Code L8HHC100 to get $100 off your registration price! 

Доверяй, но проверяй - Doveryai, No Proveryai (Trust, but verify)

For this episode, we talk with Jon Nichols, aka @WVUAlphaSoldier and @JohnKirbow, two men trained by the US military in psychological operations and disinformation. We talk with them about current disinformation campaigns, where they come from, how they work and how people can start to understand each other again. 

For this episode, we welcome Benjamin Strick, also known as BenDoBrown on Twitter. Ben tells us of an investigation that he published for Bellingcat where he was seeing contrasting information coming from Indonesia during a genocidal event. He began digging in, starting with a Twitter timeline that was publishing videos and eventually got to the source, but not without experiencing death threats for his work along the way. 

You can find Ben's writeups here: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/rest-of-world/2019/10/11/investigating-information-operations-in-west-papua-a-digital-forensic-case-study-of-cross-platform-network-analysis/ and here: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/11/11/west-papua-new-online-influence-operation-attempts-to-sway-independence-debate/

We welcome Edward Miro to this week's episode. You can find his work on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/MiroLabs or his own site, https://mirolabs.info. In this episode, Edward walks us through his start in the field as he gave a presentation in the Defcon Social Engineering Village to hundreds of attendees, and he talks about social tips he learned as a rideshare driver and also tells us how we can hack our own brain. 

Two expert social engineers, Leon (“sho_luv“) Johnson and Shane (“t1d3nio“) Young are assigned to infiltrate a financial institution. In this episode, they tell us how they went on the roof, to the basement, got into the safe and even got some valuable shirts for themselves.

Hakeem Thomas tells us about his start in OSINT, beginning with a Capture the Flag competition where he got a simple, helpful tip that led him in a career direction. He also became the expert at being able to unredact a great deal of hidden information in documents, some of which he'll share with us. You can find Hakeem on Twitter at @S6Vet_Infosec