I just took the course Intro to People OSINT/Missing People OSINT from Joe Gray and this is my impression of the course and the value I took from it.
Prior to taking this course I had completed the short Intro to OSINT course from Security Blue Team, so I didn’t go into this course with zero experience. I had some familiarity with several tools as well as knowledge of Google dorks and since I’ve been in IT for 25 years, I feel my Google fu is pretty good (more on that later). Even with that knowledge going into this course I still learned a lot, and you absolutely do not need to know any of that before taking it.
The reason I signed up for this course was two-fold. First, OSINT is very interesting to me and I wanted to learn more about it from people that actually know what they are talking about. I saw Joe a few years ago at DerbyCon when he won the inaugural SECTF, so I knew that he knew his $hit. The second reason I took it was I wanted to do another CTF and someone told me about the Trace Labs Global Missing People CTF that was coming up quickly. The final challenge in the SBT course was a ton of fun and I was hooked. I wanted more. I wanted to push myself to learn. Why not do it for a good cause? Reading up on the CTF it mentioned that Joe had a course that would help prepare you for it. I was sold and bought the course, signing up for the one taking place just 2 days later.
Signing up was of course very easy. I used the discount code you can find all over the place, got the meeting invitation from GoToTraining right away, and I was all set. Looking for the code? Some basic OSINT skills will point you to it. Good luck!
The day arrived and I joined the meeting and was greeted by everyone. Joe had obviously done this before and got everyone situated and jumped right into it after a quick intro. The course is broken down into two parts. The first is slides and discussion that lasted about 2 hours, we took a break, and then came back for part two that was a live demo of some of the tools and then we all joined him in doing a search for a missing person from Georgia.
The discussion and slide part was interactive with Joe asking us questions as he went along to keep us engaged and a lot of info was given out in what felt like a short period of time. It went by really fast! Some of the tools I had seen and used before, but like every good infosec person you can always pick up something new. So pay attention and ask questions. A lot of this is geared towards the CTF so there is a ton of content about how it works, how to submit flags, and how to get into that “investigative mindset”. To me, that was a key takeaway. How to get into that mindset of tracking down all of your leads and seeing where they take you. But also, how to not get lost down a rabbit hole and waste time. In fact, I asked Joe that exact question, how do you not end up down a path that will lead nowhere? How do you know when enough is enough, you’ve exhausted that lead, move on to something else. He had a great answer for it and I won’t give it away here. You’ll have to take the course.
Part two was the best part for me. I’m a visual learner so I tend to watch a lot of training videos or do in-person training almost exclusively. I have a hard time reading a book and getting anything out of it. Joe demonstrated a few of the tools, how they are used, and what to use them for. Most of those demos went well, so he must have paid the demo gods before the class.
From there he showed us the missing person that would be our subject for the next hour or so. We dove into Google searches, social media searches, and many websites we could use to gather specific information about our subject. I was furiously taking notes during this part and doing my own searches on the side to help find other information. It is difficult to do both and not get lost though. I would probably just stick with what Joe is doing on screen and helping through that rather than jumping back and forth. I feel you would miss things that way.
After finding a ton of info on our subject we had come to the end of our time and Joe opened it up to questions. I and several others were positing them in the chat and he got to every one of them. We wrapped it up with a quick view of new things Joe is currently working on and then we were done.
Overall, this was a very good course that I felt got me motivated and prepared for the CTF coming up in a week. Joe is a great instructor and took the time to answer everyone’s questions and would ask us questions if our engagement started dropping. To me, that’s the sign of someone that has experience teaching. A lot of people say those that teach cannot do, but in this case Joe can do both. If I had to pick something that could be better I would say maybe providing us a list of the websites he used during the demo. I think wrote them all down during the demos, but I’m not 100% sure.
If you are looking for OSINT training and want to take part in the Trace Labs CTF, I highly recommend Joe’s course.