I Know You: Contact Exploitation in SOCMINT Investigations

Picture this: You are working an OSINT case where you have a phone number or an email address—maybe the target’s real name—but after searching high and low, you haven’t been able to find a social media account. Sound familiar?

As a law enforcement human trafficking intelligence analyst, Christine Talley has experienced this roadblock on a weekly (if not daily) basis. Despite having access to a variety of databases and paid resources, her investigations can stall due to the nature of the targets. People doing bad things prefer to hide online behind monikers and aliases, but without that unique name, how do you find them? Open-source intelligence to the rescue. Christine has worked many cases where, with a "cold" phone and sock puppets, and by using the process of contact exploitation, she has pivoted from only having a phone number or email address to unearthing accounts, usernames, avatars, and profile photos that turned into solid avenues of investigation.

In this session, Christine demonstrates the process of contact exploitation in social media, messaging, and peer-to-peer money transfer apps. She discusses how this technique can also help question, validate, or disprove ownership of a phone number or email address. Using case examples from human trafficking investigations, a live demo, and a critical mindset, Christine then shows how to take the pivot points gathered through contact exploitation and turn them into actionable intelligence on your target that you may not have found otherwise.

About the Speaker
Christine Talley works on human trafficking investigations as the analyst for a county-wide task force in California. She is Crime & Intelligence Analysis and GIAC Open Source Intelligence Certified.

View upcoming Summits: http://www.sans.org/u/DuS
Download the presentation slides (SANS account required) at https://www.sans.org/u/1iaE
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