My First Global OSINT Search Party CTF WIth TraceLabs

I Participated in my first Trace Labs Global OSINT Search Party...
​And I cant wait to do it again!

When I signed up to participate in the Trace Labs Global OSINT Search Party on February 20th 2021 for the first time I had no idea what to expect. I stumbled upon the organization while doing research for a project on the internet helping to solve missing persons cases and was fascinated by their mission and the good work that Trace Labs does to help law enforcement get new leads and data on missing persons cases all over the world. I knew I had to join in but I had no idea what to except.  

---

What is Trace Labs? 

According to the Trace Labs Website,  "Trace Labs is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to accelerate the family reunification of missing persons while training members in the tradecraft of open source intelligence (OSINT)".  
But what does that mean exactly? It means that Trace Labs asks volunteers from all over to join the search for missing people. They give you resources, and show you how to use open source intelligence (OSINT) to research information that could be beneficial in the law enforcement's search in a missing persons case. They have volunteers searching for data, and verifying potential leads. Once they have collected all the data and information, they hand it all over to law enforcement so that hopefully it will assist in bringing the missing person back to their loved ones. 

What to expect the night of the event? 

The event went from 9pm-5am UTC , for me in New York that was 4pm to Midnight. At around 3pm I sent up my desk with everything I would need for the night. For me that meant my desktop and my laptop side by side, a notebook, and pens. I downloaded the Trace Labs virtual machine up on my desktop, as well as the slack channel Trace Labs uses to announce any kind of information, and it's also where you communicate with your teammates. I spoke to my team about our plan of action, and created an Excel sheet that was shared with my teammates to organize the data that we would find. 

At 4pm sharp the briefing started via zoom. We were told information about Trace Labs and the people who run the organization. They gave us an overview on the tools that we have to find data, what was allowed and not allowed when looking for information regarding the case, and what is considered good leads. Trace Labs has a zero touch policy, which means contacting the missing person (MP), family of the MP or friends of the MP is not allowed in order to avoid interrupting investigations and causing more trauma to the family.

---

Ready, set, OSINT! 

At 5pm the cases were released and we had six hours to find any data we could on the cases that might help bring these missing persons home. Honestly, for me 6 hours felt like 10 minutes. It went so quickly and when it was time to stop I felt like I could keep going for another six hours. Searching the internet for any type of clue that can help with the case gave me a feeling of determination that it hard to explain. You hope that you will find anything that will bring the families their loved ones back home. Everything that was found is submitted and sent to another set of volunteers whos job it is to verify that the information is legit and brings value to the case. This way only good leads will then be handed over to law enforcement. 

a job well done

After time is up, the search party is over, and the last bit of leads are verified, Trace Labs give honorable mentions to the teams who found the most information, the team the had the most creative way of getting a lead and then they thanked all the volunteers for taking the time out of their weekend to help people in need. 

My team and I submitted a total of 45 good leads on 5 cases. I am so proud of the work we did and I hope that the leads that come from the search party help close these cases. 

For more information on Trace Labs go to their website: Tracelabs.org