July 30, 2023
Date: August 12th, 2023
Time: 10:30am to 2:30pm Pacific Standard Time (Las Vegas local time)
Cost: Free
Attendance Required: No. Contestants can be in-person or virtual
# of Tickets Available: TBD
Platform: https://searchparty.tracelabs.org
Registration: Registration will be either in person at the DEF CON contest area or via Eventbrite. Details below
Communications: All communications between judges and contestants will happen via Discord. https://tracelabs.org/discord
Training Materials:
For a more detailed breakdown of how our CTFs work. Check out the dedicated page on our website along with the accompanying Contestant and Judge guides.
https://www.tracelabs.org/initiatives/search-party
We’re excited to see you all live. With that being said, preference, or “first dibs”, will be given to in-person sign ups.
The Trace Labs team will be live in the DEF CON contest area on Friday August 11th conducting in-person signups. We’ll have a table where you can stop by to get your registration code (and free swag!) that will act as your “ticket” to compete in the CTF
On Friday evening ( 5:00pm Las Vegas time) we will release the remaining tickets via our Eventbrite page.
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/trace-labs-global-osint-search-party-ctf-def-con-31-tickets-694502835677
Once you have your registration code (either from in-person signup or virtually through Eventbrite) the process of getting on the CTF platform will flow as it always has. Please see our training playlist for more information:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlaJQR699XLt4ib7yWgvaWM7KA12uTlB9
The success of this CTF revolves around communication. Please see the #announcement section of our Discord for detailed insructions on setting up comms with your. judge. Be patient with your judges. We are all volunteers and they will have multiple teams. The nature of this CTF introduces an element of subjectivity. Don't lose site of the overall mission. The points are secondary to the intelligence we are collecting.
Before the event, you'll need to watch our recorded Contestant Briefing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYdQIiMzRlI
Set up and test your sock puppet accounts
Familiarize yourself with the updated contestant guide <updated version will drop the week of the event>
The section above still applies. Only one registration code will be given out per person during in-person signups. If part of your team is virtual, they’ll have to take their chances getting a remaining ticket via Eventbrite that evening.
No. You can compete solo or on a team of up to 4 people.
The details of creating or joining a team on our CTF platform can be found in our training playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlaJQR699XLt4ib7yWgvaWM7KA12uTlB9
As for actually finding people to compete with…this will be up to you. Closer to the event, we’ll stand up a dedicated match making channel in our Discord server but we don’t have a formal mechanism to “match” people up with a team to compete with.
Working that out now. Will update here once confirmed.
The contest depends on volunteer “judges” vetting the intel coming in real time. Without these volunteers we wouldn’t be able to host these events. This is a great way to sharpen your OSINT skills and network within our community. We'll post a link for volunteer judge signups here by 7/31/2023
The call for Judges is now live! You can get signed with the form below. We'll be communicating with the judge team via email initially and will add roles and channels in our Discord by the beginning of DEF CON week.
https://forms.gle/fpAbNwMia8co57M28
New to OSINT? Where to begin?
Trace Labs Discord: https://tracelabs.org/discord
Trace Labs Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TraceLabsVideos
A free course on People OSINT from Joe Gray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EePeB9A2ZAk
Google: Seriously. Just type “OSINT” into your search engine and see what pops up. Other helpful search terms could include: “SOCMINT”, “Sock Puppet Account”, “People OSINT” and “Open Source Intelligence”
Github “Awesome OSINT” repo: https://github.com/jivoi/awesome-osint
OSINT resources from _OhShint: https://ohshint.gitbook.io/oh-shint-its-a-blog/
OSINT resources from Belouve: https://github.com/belouve/osint-resource
