Layer 8 Podcast

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Episode 138: Layer 8 Keynote Speaker Christina Lekati Mar 16, 2026

Show notes

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.

Episode 137: Rosa Rowles - Social Engineer Mar 09, 2026

Show notes

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!

Episode 136: Sagi Brody of Sockpuppet Mar 02, 2026

Show notes

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.

Episode 135: Mrs. OSINT Feb 23, 2026

Show notes

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.

Episode 134: Anatomy of a Con Artist - Johnathan Walton Feb 16, 2026

Show notes

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/

Episode 133: Dennis Keefe Feb 09, 2026

Show notes

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.

Episode 132 - Chris Cowling of RedTeamers.eu Feb 02, 2026

Show notes

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.

Episode 131: Kirby Plessas and the PEN May 26, 2025

Show notes

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.

Episode 130: Positive Reinforcement and Gamification in Security Awareness with CyberHoot May 12, 2025

Show notes

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.

Episode 129: Tim Farmer - Deanonymizing the Dark Web Apr 28, 2025

Show notes

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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