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Published by Layer 8 Conference
Welcome to the Layer 8 Podcast season 5! This season we’ll have conversations with social engineers and OSINT investigators who will tell their stories. We hope you enjoy them.
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Dr. Abbie Maroño is a behavioral scientist and the Director of Education for Social Engineer, LLC. She frequently consults on body language, non-verbals and public speaking, all using data backed by science. She is a frequent contributor on Court TV and consults with attorneys on questioning techniques. She also wrote " The Upper Hand: Mastering Persuasion and Getting What You Want with the Science of Social Engineering " You can learn more about Dr. Abbie on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/doctorabbieofficial/ or TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@doctorabbieofficial
John Bejakovic is a business copywriter who writes a daily newsletter at bejakovic.com , an online journal and wrote a book about influence techniques that he has learned. He acknowledges the work of Robert Cialdini and then builds on Cialdini's work. His book, with the shortened title " The 10 Commandments of Con Men... " gives 10 different influence techniques along with stories, research and John's own experience in learning and using these techniques. These are all areas that any social engineer can use to enhance their own skills.
The Layer 8 Conference will have a full scope social engineering capture the flag (CTF) competition this year. This is an event that has been created by John Costa and Jordan Saleh. In this episode, we hear from John and Jordan about their experience in creating CTFs and their thought process in building this one. If you're interested in being a social engineer or love CTF competitions, you'll want to be at the Layer 8 Conference and compete in this event!
Brett Redman , the Chief Operating Officer of OSINT Industries returns to the Layer 8 Podcast. He talks a bit about platform and training opportunities available through his company. We also talked about the role that AI plays in OSINT investigations. Brett also told us about his conversations he has with law enforcement agencies on using OSINT leading up to large scale public events such as the World Cup. Brett will be a speaker at the Layer 8 Conference this year with his "It's all about the method, man by Redman." If you don't get the references, you'll want to check out this episode, or his talk at Layer 8 or even the Layer 8 podcast the last time he was on.
For this episode, our host attended a covert entry class with Covert Access Team in Copenhagen, and spoke with Gunther Royen and Scott McLean about their experiences. They talk tales of physical security bypass, lessons learned and give some tips on how to access some seemingly locked facilities.
On this episode, we're excited to announce that the OSINT keynote speaker for the Layer 8 Conference will be Micah Hoffman ! See more about Micah here: https://layer8conference.com/keynote-speakers-2026/ In this episode, Micah is joined by Lisette Abercrombie , aka Technisette ! Lisette and Micah are creators of MyOSINT Training and both will be teaching a course at the Layer 8 Conference on June 3-4. Tickets to the course are available at: https://www.myosint.training/courses/layer8-2026 Lisette will also be presenting at the Layer 8 Conference talking about some of the mistakes she has learned from during her career as an OSINT investigator working in law enforcement. Come meet Lisette and attend her presentation at the Layer 8 Conference this year!
Brian Harris is the creator of Covert Access Team , a company that performs physical security testing. That can include testing whether your detection and response is up to snuff, or if your physical controls such as locks or PAC systems can be defeated, or even whether social engineering would work. Brian also teaches classes in these topics, including one where you learn all the skills and then get to actually test them out on a real facility. In this episode, we'll talk about all aspects of physical security testing.
Carter Zupancich is a Solutions Architecture Manager at Doppel . In this episode, Carter tells us how far AI has come in assisting with phone phishing, or vishing. AI has been built up to where it's almost impossible to detect that you're not speaking to a real human and it can do OSINT lookups in just milliseconds, to assist with information on the call. Carter will be presenting at the Layer 8 Conference, happening June 5-6 in Boston!
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 is the Subject Matter Expert at Maltego where he works with clients on custom OSINT solutions and also runs their public CTFs and conference demonstrations. He co-wrote a whitepaper on discovering some "behind the scenes" of pig butchering scams and how they are often Scam as a Service offerings. Maltego is a Silver Sponsor of the Layer 8 Conference on June 5-6, so come see them in Boston!
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 got conned out of $100,000 by a very experienced con-woman. When most people get conned or scammed, they're embarrassed and never tell anyone about the experience. Johnathan is different. He tells everyone about it, including law enforcement and multiple court judges. Johnathan got his con artist imprisoned twice. He also assists others who have been conned. While reviewing his experience and that of others, he noticed recurring themes. He calls these themes "red flags" that many con artists exhibit. In his book " Anatomy of a Con Artist " he details 14 of these red flags and how to spot them. Johnathan has also created the Queen of the Con podcast where he tells his story, as well as during television and public speaking engagements, which can be found on his site at https://johnathanwalton.com/
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.
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"
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Apple Podcasts rankings via the Mato Topic Intelligence Platform.
Observed September 13, 2026. Cached outside the daily freshness window; the positions keep the date they were taken on.
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