Layer 8 Podcast

Jennifer Shannon is a Senior Security Consultant for Secure Ideas. Kevin Tackett is formerly known as Kevin Johnson, the CEO and founder of Secure Ideas. On this episode, we talked about why Kevin tells some prospective clients that he won't do social engineering for them. We also go into some SE stories, some favorite pretexts and why social engineers get stopped by the people they're testing.

Mathieu Gaucheler, Senior subject matter expert at Maltego who builds OSINT tools and researches scam infrastructure. He talks about how Maltego visualizes investigations and avoids OSINT rabbit holes. He explores pig butchering scams and the scams-as-a-service economy. He also covers in-game gambling risks, OPSEC pitfalls from reused identifiers, and practical tools and workflows for investigators.

The Layer 8 Conference is excited to announce the first of its keynote speakers for 2026, Christina Lekati!Christina is a social engineering specialist who works with Cyber Risk, GmbH in Munich, Germany. She got her undergraduate degree in Psychology and has a Masters in International Business Studies. She has been a part of the OSINT Curious team and has taught her classes at Black Hat in Las Vegas but will also be offering her two-day social engineering class at the Layer 8 Conference this year. Come join us at the Layer 8 Conference, meet Christina and all of our other incredible speakers in Boston, MA on June 5-6.

Rosa Rowles has spent more than six years as a social engineer, mainly performing vishing calls. She reports that she has made more than 20,000 calls in her career. In this episode, she talks about using OSINT to build a pretext and how she chooses favorite pretexts to fit into a target's own bias. She also explains amygdala hijacking and how the right pretext can put someone's mind into a state where they might not make the best choices. Rosa will be presenting at BSides Tampa on May 16 at 2 pm!

Sagi Brody is the CEO and creator of Sockpuppet.io, a company that makes sockpuppets available for investigations. If you've ever tried to create your own sock accounts, you know how difficult they can sometimes be to create, maintain and even to keep from being deleted. Sagi explains how this came about, what changes he has seen in the industry and why outsourcing your socks may be a better use of an investigator's time. Sockpuppet is a Gold Sponsor of the 2026 Layer 8 Conference.

It's pretty easy to guess what she does simply by her name. Mrs. OSINT has an incredible web site dedicated to sharing her learning journey and helping others do the same. She has a "Start Here" page for people looking to get into OSINT and she also has frequent OSINT challenges for those looking to test their own skills. Even better, her site is bilingual! She has blog posts in both Spanish and English.

Johnathan Walton, former TV producer turned con hunter and author of Anatomy of a Con Artist. He recounts being conned for nearly $100,000 and how that launched his investigation methods. Discussion covers the 14 red flags of scammers, emotional manipulation tactics, using publicity and evidence to force prosecution, and practical steps like background checks and recording interactions.

Want to get into the OSINT field and are unsure where to start? Then this is the episode for you. Dennis Keefe started out in law enforcement, became a web developer and then changed into the OSINT field through his own determination and hard work. Through this episode, Dennis will talk about his path to OSINT and how others can follow in his footsteps. Dennis' web site where he posts all of his learning and advice can be found at https://denniskeefe.me This episode is sponsored by Compass Cyber Guard.

Have you thought much about physical security and whether someone could breach a building's guards, alarms and cameras? On this episode, we talk with Chris Cowling, the founder of RedTeamers.eu and their training company, RedTeamers.academy. We talk about setting expectations about scope and how Chris goes about bypassing the features of a secure facility. You can listen to Chris talk about how he does it and you can also watch him in this short video where he demonstrates some of his company's skills in covert entry: https://redteamers.eu/redteamers_video.mp4 If you take a course with Red Teamers, they are offering a discount to Layer 8 Podcast listeners, just use "Layer826" as the discount code. This episode and the Layer 8 Conference are sponsored by Compass Cyber Guard.

Kirby Plessas is an OSINT pioneer, US military veteran, business owner, board member, is OSC certified and podcast host. Kirby was an Arabic linguist in the military who started sharing what she knew with team members in a newsletter and it grew from there. She is the founder of the Plessas Experts Network which offers training, classes and webinars in OSINT investigations. She also co-hosts the OSINT Cocktail podcast where they talk about investigations and techniques seen in movies and television shows.