>

vivhack

$title =

Trace Labs Global OSINT Search Party CTF 25′

;

$content = [

My first ever CTF umm… unconventional

When most people hear the term capture the flag – the first thing that comes to mind is hacking or flag football ( thanks middle school ). This CTF however, was a bit different…

CTF Duration: 11am – 3pm EST ( 4 Hours ) Team: Solo Team Name: Alias Investigations ( A little inspiration from Jessica Jones )

🧩 Event Details

Each team was assigned four real missing persons cases. The goal? Gather as much relevant open-source intelligence (OSINT) as possible for each case, which would then be handed off to law enforcement to assist in investigations.

🛠️My toolkit

  • 🔍 Search Engines: Google
  • 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 People Finders: Whitepages
  • 📱 Social Media Recon: Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Pinterest, Tiktok, LinkedIn, Steam
  • 🌍 Geo Intel: Google Maps
  • 🧭 Misc.: Reddit, Doenetwork.org, GoFundMe
  • 🧾 Note Taking: Notepad
  • Sockpuppets: using burner profiles to get around the sign up wall for some social media

🧠 My Method

For the first three hours, I focused on digging into each case individually, aiming to:

  • Understand the missing person’s timeline and last known events
  • Locate and analyze their social media to get a sense of personality and lifestyle
  • Identify the subject’s close family and partner’s social presence

As leads began to dry up—what I call “getting lost in the sauce”—I shifted to alternative sources:

  • Searching for matching John/Jane Doe reports in the last known area
  • Running names and numbers through Whitepages
  • Scanning Reddit and Facebook groups already following the cases

⚠️ Challenges

  • Distinguishing useful intel from noise for submission
  • Dealing with private or locked social accounts
  • Navigating around sock puppets and burner profiles ( getting hit with odd authentication methods such as Facebook’s video selfie method )
  • Managing the pressure of the final hour
  • Working solo (💪 team of one!)

🏁Final Results:

  • 🎯Score: 385
  • 📓Ranking: 104
  • ✨Personal Win: Law enforcement located one of the missing persons—alive 🙏

📋 Takeaways

  • Ethics:
    • 🤫Practicing passive reconnaissance
      • Do not engage with family/friends of the subject
      • Do not engage with the groups or online communities
      • Do not engage, period.
    • Being mindful through sockpuppets: For Example, when visiting a profile on LinkedIn that user can view who is looking at their profile.
  • 🧠Mental Health:
    • Never get attached to the subjects
    • Only using the CTF timespan for the cases – walk away from the cases to prevent getting attached
    • Assume the worst – in this CTF law enforcement were able to find one person. However, this is not the case for the rest of them out in the world. You have to prepare your mind beforehand that homicide, suicide, human trafficking, and death from natural causes tend to be common in missing cases.
  • ✏️Change my investigation method:
    • Pivoting
    • MORE NOTETAKING GAHHHH!!!!
    • Investigation Boards
    • Look into public Github tools on OSINT
    • Adding Gamer tag finders to social media tools ( not just Steam )
  • Practice with other missing cases
  • 👥On the next CTF – don’t be solo.

];

$date =

;

$category =

;

$author =

Doris Morales

;

$previous =

;

$next =

;