Layer 8 Podcast

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 S...

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, r...

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&#3...

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 W...

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 J...

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...

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 L...

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 te...

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...

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 V...

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...

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...

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 bo...

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 hi...

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 h...

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...

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 O...

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...

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 t...

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-impor...

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 eng...

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...

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 le...

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_inside...