11/2021 TraceLabs CTF Search Party Judging Write-Up
I was a judge for the 11/6/2021 TraceLabs CTF Search Party. This was a very enlightening experience and I learned a lot about open-source intelligence (OSINT), missing persons, and how a CTF competition works behind the scenes. TraceLabs is a cybersecurity non-profit that utilizes the technological skills of cybersecurity students and professionals to help find real missing people using passive reconnaissance techniques. Search Parties are 4–6 hour events where participants are given limited information about a select number of people and use OSINT techniques to find information about these people to earn flags (examples include social media pages, contacts, and even a current location of the subject). To learn more about the mission of TraceLabs and join their Discord community, please visit tracelabs.org.
My experience volunteering as a judge with TraceLabs was unique in that I am a complete beginner in OSINT. The community is very welcoming and was willing to answer all of my questions. Through my 5.5 hours of volunteering as a judge for 4 extremely talented teams, my eyes were opened to the realities of using OSINT in the real world. OSINT gathering requires sifting through social media and the Internet searching for a variety of clues that might help save somebody. The technical skills required to find information are little, but the skills required to be a skilled OSINT practitioner that can use the found information to build a new conclusion to give to law enforcement are many. Through working with my teams, I got to see their impressive progression in the quality of their OSINT findings throughout the 4 hours of competition. They started looking for more connections between evidence and finding some useful intelligence for law enforcement which was promising to see as a judge. 3 of my 4 teams scored in the top 100 teams in the competition which was exciting to see.
One can not write about a TraceLabs CTF without writing about the emotional rollercoaster that comes with the territory of searching for information about missing people. There is joy, sadness, frustration, excitement, anxiety, anger, but most importantly a feeling of importance, that you are making a tangible difference in the world, in the lives of these families. Even though there were only 4 subjects that the 650 contestants were searching for, the 4 stories of these people were heart wrenching in their own ways. The mother of one of the subjects got a ransom text from a man saying that he had her daughter in ill condition and that the daughter would be in danger if she did not pay him. The sister of another subject posted hours before the event that her brother’s body had likely been found by authorities. The parents of the two minors that were missing all had criminal histories and social media gossip claimed they were responsible for their children being missing. These stories horrified me but also motivated me to continue judging to make sure all of the intel our contestants gathered was accurate and would help law enforcement find these people.
One of my mentors who inspired me to pursue my passion in cybersecurity warned me that I would see the pure ugliness and evil of the world if I entered cybersecurity. I got to see that today with the TraceLabs CTF. However, I saw a lot more than pure ugliness and evil today. I saw a community of passionate cyberwarriors banding together to help find people they don’t know. To help families and friends find closure. To make a difference in this world. To #OSINTForGood. And that’s the main takeaway I gained from being a TraceLabs judge: that cyberwarriors will always be working to combat the pure ugliness and evil of the criminals in the world. That good will prevail over evil.
