Next month, SANS Institute and Trace Labs will host an Open-Source Intelligence (OISINT) Missing Persons Capture the Flag in Washington, D.C., in which professionals will compete to find leads in real missings persons cases. Participants will gather intelligence from available data on government records, the dark web, social media, and other platforms in exchange for points that are awarded for each piece of data previously unknown to law enforcement.
In teams of four, up to seventy-five hackers will compete at the event in December. In July of 2018, the first OISINT Missing Persons CTF was held in Toronto, and since then Trace Labs has ran over 25 similar events in five different countries, working on over 200 missing persons cases. Trace Labs states that they aim to include cases from different backgrounds and regions, focusing on cases where the missing person has had significant online activity. Although information on December’s CTF remains undisclosed, Trace Labs states that cases will involve a combination of missing youth and adults.
Read More: Capture the Flag Competition Aims to Trace Missing Persons
