OSINT for Good: Trace Labs Missing Person CTF

An experience worth repeating!

Trace Labs is designed to serve as a tool for enhancing the state of missing persons location and family reunification.

Trace Labs offers a modern, cost-effective, and accessible approach to an issue that has broken many families — their fundamental goal is to provide open-source intelligence (OSINT) to law enforcement, gathered at regular OSINT operations and via information security conferences CTF (Capture the Flag) events.

This OSINT CTF is non-theoretical, where contestants work to crowdsource the OSINT set in teams of up to four members that can ultimately generate new leads on missing persons. In comparison to the conventional technical natured CTFs, where “flags” are concealed inside pre-configured servers/virtual machines that contestants must access using hacking techniques to gain points, Trace Labs OSINT CTF categorizes “flags” based on pieces of information gathered that law enforcement can use to help in missing person cases.

The contest runs in the structure of a Capture the Flag (CTF), in which participants must collect multiple “flags” equating to points. As each submitted flag is regarded as a possible “lead intelligence,” Trace Labs has a team of volunteers known as “Judges” who verify each submission and award points if…