Layer 8 Podcast

Craig Taylor is the founder and CEO of CyberHoot a security awareness company that focuses on positive reinforcement and gamification. Craig studied psychology and used that knowledge when creating CyberHoot, which he offers for free. Craig also set up a challenge specifically for listeners of the Layer 8 Podcast, if you'd like to test your ability to identify a phish and the parts of a phish quickly. It's even free! You can try that out here: https://cps.cyberhoot.com/hootphish-challenge/?hash=65199056c6edbc93f2755078a5b15743 There will be a leaderboard, and you can check your status on the leaderboard here: https://cps.cyberhoot.com/hootphish-challenge/shared-results/?hash=8b7f346b97c7dd027215d741f0ae36fb This free challenge will end on May 31, 2025.

Tim Farmer is the OSINT Training Lead for Dark Blue at CACI. He performs investigations along with teaching OSINT classes with a focus on the deep and dark web. (Don't know the difference? We discuss that in this episode.) Tim has his own podcast with Chris, titled The OSINT Output. Tim has achieved the OSC certification from Osmosis Academy and will be presenting at the Layer 8 Conference this year with a talk titled "Deanonymizing Dark Web Hidden Services: Capitalizing on User Mistakes and Querying Internet of Things Databases"

Dorota Kozlowska is a social engineer and penetration tester for Black Hills Information Security. She has her own podcast which can be found on Twitch and YouTube and recently presented at the Disobey conference in Finland. On this episode, she talks about how to get into social engineering as a job, some techniques for elicitation, what skills one needs to be a social engineer and the all-important sympathy vs. empathy.

Sho Luv, aka Leon Johnson is a ninja, a hacker, a penetration tester and a computer security expert. Leon has performed all types of testing engagements and has mentored many other aspiring pentesters. On this episode, Leon talks about what it takes to be a tester along with some of his own stories of social engineering engagements and his thoughts on being a Black man while doing covert entry engagements. If you want to try your hand at the hacker box Leon created, titled Mr. Robot, have at it: https://sholuv.net/

How does a man living in England trace the history of Compton, California and the evolution of gangs across the country? And then evolve to tracking financial crimes? By using his OSINT skills! In this episode, Brett Redman the Head of Intelligence at Blackdot Solutions takes us through where he started with tracking this information and also some discussion of OSINT differences between the US and UK, with an emphasis on investigational ethics.

Olie Brown is a self-described hacker and the creator of the penetration testing company CC Labs. In this episode, Olie tells us of some social engineering exploits he has pulled off with some very simple techniques. He also stresses the social in social engineering with his tips on how people can get started and how to get better at social engineering. He also talks about why he is constantly learning and hasn't slowed down.

Dmitry Danilov, aka Soxoj is an OSINT investigator and CPO for Social Links. In this episode, we talk about his Substack where he shares his methodology and his incredibly helpful "4P Method" of doing investigations. We also talked about some of the tools he works with and created, which you can find in his github: https://github.com/soxoj https://soxoj.com/ https://t.me/soxoj_insides https://github.com/soxoj/maigret Presentation at LeHack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yQRf0Mx-hc https://sociallinks.io/products/sl-crimewall

Jeff Tomkiewicz, aka The Gh0stface Killer is a social engineer who is employed but a health services company. He will also be teaching a pretexting workshop at the Layer 8 Conference! You can find out more about that here: https://layer8conference.com/training-at-layer-8-conference-2025/ In this episode, we learn how Jeff moved from the military to becoming a social engineer where he does red team engagements for his company. He also penned a great article about social engineering and pretexting here: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/8467826462.html Let's talk covert entry, vishing, phishing and how to get into the field with Jeff!

My OSINT Training is a company created by Griffin (@hatless1der) Glynn and Micah (@webbreacher) Hoffman. Their goal was to create affordable high quality OSINT training, and they'll be offering that at the Layer 8 Conference in June! You can sign up today for their class! In this episode, we also spoke about the National Child Protection Task Force (NCPTF) and how Micah and Griffin conduct investigations along with how others can help and how ethics play a huge part in their investigations. Griffin also runs a hugely popular page of OSINT tools at The Ultimate OSINT Collection

Get your ticket to the Layer 8 Conference on June 14, in Boston! In this episode, we're joined by Nico Dekens, aka Dutch_OSINTGuy where he talks about lessons in OSINT including the value of operational security, ethics and classes he teaches. He also tells us about his 5W1H method of performing an investigation. We also discussed some blog posts he wrote for ShadowDragon, including one about OSINT on people in heightened emotional states.