OSINT after dark with MJ Banias

MJ Banias: And honestly, here’s another one that we use often as well is archives. Like I have had so many phone calls with like the sweetest old ladies who work. Every Tuesday between 2 and 4 p. m. at this tiny little library in this tiny little midwestern town. And they only have enough money to pay her for like two hours a week.

MJ Banias: Because that’s all the money that, like, this municipality has given to this library and this archive to pay this, like, little old lady to do it. And it’s like, I need information on the following case.

Aubrey Byron: Welcome to Needlestack. I’m Aubrey Byron. 

Shannon Ragan: And I’m Shannon Reagan. Today we’re talking to M. J. Benias. M. J. is a journalist, writer, and investigations lead at Permanent Record Research. M. J. Welcome to the show. 

MJ Banias: Well, thank you so much for having me. It’s, it’s a pleasure. 

Aubrey Byron: Before we start off today’s show, I’m going to give a slight content warning.

Aubrey Byron: We’ll be tackling some of the not suitable for work subjects and how they relate to OSINT. Just an FYI. So, if your environment isn’t conducive to that. For some reason, you have little OSINT kiddos running around in the background. Maybe bookmark this, save it for later. 

MJ Banias: This is the, the After Dark episode of Needlestack.

MJ Banias: Yes. 

Aubrey Byron: Needlestack After Dark. It’s 

Shannon Ragan: been coming for a long time. 

Aubrey Byron: If it wasn’t 11am, maybe I would have a cocktail. That’s right. 

Shannon Ragan: Yeah. 

Aubrey Byron: Okay, so, MJ, on that note, you wrote about how one of the most basic human nature needs, the drive for sex, can be a big OPSEC liability and a gift to Ossengers. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

MJ Banias: Sure. So, I wrote a post for a blog called Bullshit Hunting. It’s, it’s, it’s an interesting little space on the internet where we sort of wax poetic and discuss sort of. Interesting issues are in the OSINT investigation space forensics, analysis, all that. And one of the pieces I decided to write or a story I decided to tell was, was an investigation I was working on a while back regarding just tracking an individual down, kind of the usual stuff.

MJ Banias: We had a client who needed to sort of identify somebody and, and it’s all in the blog, so I’m not going to go over it at length, but the, the key piece of the puzzle that allowed me to locate this individual. Was an email account that they used to create an account on a popular service called Adult Friend Finder.

MJ Banias: And for all of the, the uneducated, or all of you who live under a rock, Adult Friend Finder is basically like a hookup site. So if you’re, you know, having a lonely night, feeling thirsty, you can create an account on Adult Friend Finder and essentially I feel like there should be like, like, music in the background at this point, you know?

MJ Banias: We should have like a We’ll put some pornographic music overlay here. But Adult Friend Finder, you can essentially create an account and find other people who are in a similar situation, who are looking to get lucky and, and, and, you know, hook up. It’s, it’s, you know, there’s criticism on, on the service, you know, they say there’s a lot of bots and that type of stuff, but regardless, I was looking for an individual and an email that I had sort of discovered regarding this person popped up in a data breach.

MJ Banias: Of adult friend finder. And with that, I was able to locate this individual’s profile, which then led me to a whole bunch of other selectors that were quite useful in eventually sort of identifying this individual the anonymizing them and then sort of subsequently handing that all off to the client for their own kind of use after our job is done as those centers.

MJ Banias: But yeah, that’s the sex is what got in the way for for this individual. And their their need to have it. On some lonely night, 2021 or something, whatever it was. 

Shannon Ragan: Well, there are, there are a lot of lonely people out there. I think I kind of came into this bullshit hunting article, which by the way, I am a super fan of bullshit hunting.

Shannon Ragan: I love this newsletter publication. It is great for OSINT tips. I think it is also just one of the most like cleverly and interestingly written OSINT pieces out there, like OSINT educational pieces out there. So highly recommend. But I came into it from an article you wrote in the debrief that was about the OPSEC fail of the South African parliament, and then maybe also of the deep personal needs and thirstiness of MPs.

Shannon Ragan: Could you speak a little bit about What happened in in that case and similar, you know, involvement of personal email addresses and what that unfolded into. 

MJ Banias: Sure. Yeah. So I can get into that. This this was a tip I received from a sort of a friend and he have pointed to. Yeah, he, he sort of showed me a report that was written by a group called OSINT Industries.

MJ Banias: And if you’re sort of in the OSINT world, you’ve probably seen them rolling around LinkedIn and Twitter. OSINT Industries is very similar to sort of Epios. I, I, I really like OSINT Industries. It’s like, You can punch in a phone number or an email and it starts running through various modules, essentially pulling data out of it.

MJ Banias: So it’s a very useful, handy kind of like web browser version of a sort of a search, a database search. And they wrote a report concerning the South African Essentially, members of parliament and how the South African government website for those members of parliament published, you know, these are our members of parliament and put in photographs and email addresses and phone numbers.

MJ Banias: The kicker was that a lot of those emails and phone numbers were actually personal emails and personal phone numbers. So they weren’t like designated like at ministry dot s a dot com or anything like that. Like it wasn’t a sort of a specific sanctioned government email. It was like, you know, J smith at gmail dot com.

MJ Banias: And they were just like their generic kind of emails they use for day to day. As well as phone numbers. So what OSINT Industries did, and what I talked about in my article was how they essentially started running all these emails and all these phone numbers through their, their, their system. And it started popping out that a lot of these email accounts were used to create accounts on Pornhub and other sort of pornographic video services.

MJ Banias: There was no adult friend finder, which was, you know, a great sign for, for, for the South African government. But, you know, there were a lot of links to, to, you know, like I said, various kind of two pornographic streaming sites. So you have essentially this, this interesting kind of operational security risk where, you know, you would be able to identify which you know, members of parliament are, are, utilizing these sites and then or their emails are utilizing these sites.

MJ Banias: And then really, if you wanted to dig in here, right, you could potentially start trying to comb through some breach data, potentially combing through other kind of repositories of passwords and that sort of thing. And you could really get to know somebody really well based upon their sexual proclivities in porn hub.

MJ Banias: So, so, you know, I’m just saying, you know, again, operational security wise, this is kind of a, a really sticky situation. You know, I guess it depends on the MP, depends on their political leanings, there’s like a whole mess of issues that could arise here you know, especially like oppo research and politics and that type of thing but moreover, like beyond the pornographic stuff, there was like, there was accounts on a whole bunch of other services and a lot of them were like fitness and wellness services that literally track like GPS location and steps and like running apps that track like your location as you run through a park and that type of stuff.

MJ Banias: So again, from an operational security perspective, you have all of this data that’s just sitting out there on a government website that anyone could just start kind of. Scraping through and and essentially, like, really pick out interesting details regarding a possible target that that, you know, you can hire to acquire or collect information on.

MJ Banias: And yeah, it’s also kind of sitting on a government website. 

Aubrey Byron: I wanted to ask you about that because I did pick up that Strava was used in that South African parliament investigation. And I’m a cyclist, so I’m very familiar with Strava and. I think maybe hyper aware of when it gets used in cases like there was the assassination of a Russian commander where it led to a break and then kind of the like famous case of people being able to map US military bases based on The running habits of soldiers using Strava and, but I never really see it kind of an on lists of like OSINT resources.

Aubrey Byron: I, I feel like it could be an underutilized or maybe it’s just so creepy that people don’t want to use it. 

MJ Banias: Yeah, I think it just depends on your target, right? I mean, if, you know, it’s not often, like, and I’ll be honest, like I’ve done a few investigations, and very rarely has Strava ever popped up as like a tool to use.

MJ Banias: And typically it’s because I think the people I, you know, the people a lot of O Centers generally investigate are, like, you know, avid runners or cyclists. They’re, you know, they’re, They’re a little more, maybe like a reclusive payment at, you know, 6 AM every morning, you know, getting their steps in and, and, and any of that.

MJ Banias: So I don’t know. Does it have like, is Strava good to use for sure, but only if the individual you’re going after has a Strava account after that it’s like, no, who cares, but yeah, I don’t know. Maybe people just don’t want to have 

Shannon Ragan: to really fit members of parliament. Maybe 

MJ Banias: that’s right. Yeah. Like your target is like super fat, right?

MJ Banias: Like a very healthy drink my Coca Cola. Right? Just like, 

Shannon Ragan: should we take a moment and talk about your Coca Cola 

Aubrey Byron: endorsements? 

MJ Banias: Listen, I 

Aubrey Byron: feel like. 

MJ Banias: That’s 

Aubrey Byron: one thing I learned about you from reading your writing is I think you might have a Coke Zero addiction. 

MJ Banias: Yeah, I do. Listen, Permanent Record Research nor Bullshit Hunting has any affiliation with Coca Cola Corporation.

MJ Banias: Like, we do not. Like, they’re not paying us. They’re, we’re not, you know, I haven’t received a free case or a coupon or anything. It’s just, it is a fine beverage. So, you know, if you want to be a great O Center, Go to www. coca cola. com Coke Zero is your friend. No it just tastes really 

Shannon Ragan: good. Send the cases.

MJ Banias: I’m not sure, do we have to Greek it? Like in movies, right? You have to cover stuff so you can’t see the logo? It’s called Greeking? I don’t know. But yeah. We don’t have 

Shannon Ragan: that post production budget. 

MJ Banias: I have to blur it out every time I take a sip. 

Shannon Ragan: Back to maybe the icky factor you talked about, you know, maybe not wanting to dive into someone’s Strava.

Shannon Ragan: You also mentioned breach data, which I feel like is one of those, like, I don’t know, litmus tests in, in OSINT. It’s incredibly valuable. I think that’s undeniable, but like, when do you kind of decide when and if to, to use it, or even just go poking there? 

MJ Banias: Yeah, it really depends on the client, right? So, so.

MJ Banias: You know, whenever we engage with a client and they give us tasks right to perform, you know, if, if we were very clear, I mean, like, okay, what are, what are sort of the rules of engagement here, right? Because at the end of the day, who, like, who is this report for? Who’s essentially going to be potentially the final client?

MJ Banias: Is this going to end up on the front page of a newspaper? Like, what are the steps that we have to follow as the researchers here? And your clients are very, very good at like, clients are very, very clear and like, listen, these are the rules you have to follow. You cannot do the following things and, and often, you know, not often, but sometimes, right?

MJ Banias: They’ll be like, listen, you know, breached data, for example, or, or leaked stuff is not, you can’t touch it. You know, like, we don’t, we don’t, we don’t want any part of that just in case, you know, this has to go somewhere else or be presented up a chain or, you know, Again, it could look bad. So it’s totally based upon upon your client here.

MJ Banias: So, so that’s kind of all I like. That’s the only response I can really give. Like if I’m going to be doing something sort of like from a journalism standpoint, or you know, investigating certain things like so, for example In the case of of this individual I was going after and I found their stuff in an adult friend finder leak, we had clearance that, you know, yeah, you’re allowed to use sort of any means necessary to find this individual versus other situations where you’re not.

MJ Banias: So, yeah, I think it’s kind of, it depends. That’s my, that’s my great answer to your gray question of just like, I just, it’s okay. 

Shannon Ragan: It is a gray, gray matter. 

MJ Banias: It is. 

Shannon Ragan: Well, you did mention something newspapers and you do come from a journalism background. I was actually reading, I think it’s your latest bullshit hunting article that was on kind of tracking the whereabouts or you know, handoffs of this.

Shannon Ragan: Particular vase and it was, you know, it happened in the late nineties you were using kind of the internet to locate people that might have come in touch with it or touch with buyers and sort of as an afterthought, you’re like, oh, my God, like newspapers. Do you think that centers kind of have this blind spot, like, you know, in all of the online investigations that they do have, like, using newspaper archives?

MJ Banias: Yeah. And here’s the and here’s like, here’s actually, I literally had a conversation about this yesterday. I think in OSINT, we have this really kind of ingrained concept that, like, tools and coding and utilizing sort of incredible computer software to do the work, to streamline it, to automate it, like, that’s become a big part of this game.

MJ Banias: Right. It’s become a massive part of how OSINT is done. And, you know, a lot of people coming into OSINT now, you know, they have a background in some coding. They have a background in, in, in aspects of, like, cyber security or hacking. Like, they have, they have that kind of computer know how. To kind of go out and just scrape vast amounts of data and the big companies out there that are making millions of dollars selling OSINT toolkits are essentially kind of selling this product in different markets, right?

MJ Banias: We’re able to go out, scrape a whole boatload of data and then, you know, compartmentalize it for you to make your investigations easier. And that’s like a huge chunk of the OSINT industry. And that’s great. Like some of those tools are amazing and they’re useful. The problem is they start to really fall apart when you start moving back in time, right?

MJ Banias: Like if you need to start looking at data that starts to kind of appear. Before the sort of internet became a large thing where people were all over the internet and that type of thing. You’re starting to kind of, you know, that’s that toolkit becomes a little less useful and the kind of the, the classic kind of investigatory gumshoeing becomes more useful.

MJ Banias: right? The ability to just go out and think about these problems in ways outside of a computer. Like, okay, I can’t find any of this information in data scrapes. So how do I now go about finding information about whatever I need in kind of more traditional kind of investigatory ways? So, so newspaper archives in this case in particular, when I was trying to find a vase that had sort of vanished from an investigation Finding the vase I knew would be like, this is not going to happen.

MJ Banias: Like this vase does not exist on some like eBay or anything like that. This is, this thing’s gone most likely, right? Like this thing is most likely been smashed and it’s sitting in a landfill. Or it’s like in some like old lady’s attic. And she bought it at a yard sale in like 1997. And it’s been there ever since.

MJ Banias: And just, it’s Yeah, right. And like, you know, she keeps her pens in it or something. 

Aubrey Byron: It’ll be on the Antiques Roadshow. 

MJ Banias: Right? Exactly. And there’s gonna be that moment where I’m watching Antiques Roadshow in like five years. And it’s like, oh my god, there it is! Holy shit! You know what I mean? Sorry, I said shit on your show.

MJ Banias: Is that okay? 

Shannon Ragan: We already did the disclaimer. It’s fine. 

MJ Banias: Great. So, I started looking not for the vase itself, but for people who potentially would have worked at sort of the shop, the antique shop that it was sold to kind of after this, this incident occurred. It was a homicide basically. And what I didn’t find was the vase.

MJ Banias: But what I did find was. The antique shop being featured sort of multiple times in the nineties and in kind of local newspaper articles and the journalists, there’s, I think, to two of them who kind of covered like throughout sort of the mid nineties covered this antique store for like a community, like antiques are all the craze, like that kind of thing.

MJ Banias: They interviewed other employees at the store, and there’s like photos of them, like, posing with like, I don’t know, some, you know, cabinet, like, plate, fancy things, like, oh, look at this, you know, and you have these photographs and these names of employees. So now all of a sudden we have people who would have been in that store employed at the same time that vase was in the store, bought and sold and whatever.

MJ Banias: So, so we essentially had now a couple names that we could go after and say, okay, you know, we knew they worked there because their pictures in the paper and they were in tribute. So now we need to talk to them and see, do they remember anyone else they worked with? Right? And, and it’s funny, they do, right?

MJ Banias: People like stay in touch, and they’re like, Oh yeah, there was Greg. You should talk to Greg. He knew everything. He was the, he was the gossip of the store. If that vase is somewhere, he knows it. Like, that’s kind of what it was. So, so you know, you reach out to Greg, and then Greg would give you another name.

MJ Banias: And you would start kind of building out this kind of web of individuals who potentially would have been near that person. Vase at any given moment through its sort of history in that store. 

Shannon Ragan: There’s, there’s so much picking up the phone also in your stories that I think would just make any millennial just like.

Shannon Ragan: Humble into a pile of dust, like between that and like reading newspapers, 

MJ Banias: right? And that’s so funny. I do call people like and again, this becomes a matter of the rules of engagement. So a lot of our clients, for example, say, no, no, you don’t talk to anybody. It’s all passive, right? You like, don’t tell anybody what you’re doing in this particular case.

MJ Banias: It was the rules of engagement were like, don’t call people. But give us their contact information and we will call them. And if we need your help, you know, we might have you speak to them because you know this a little more intimately. So if we have questions, we might just connect you. So there was like one or two moments where I spoke to people about this face and just kind of asked, like, very direct question.

MJ Banias: Like, you know, we know this, we know this, we know this. We don’t know this. Do you have this answer? So, so typically. I, you know, rules of engagement apply here, but there have been cases for sure that I’ve worked on, as well as stories that I’ve worked on as a journalist, where you definitely have to just randomly cold call people and be like, Hey, are you this person?

MJ Banias: And that’s how you get a lot of your intelligence. 

Aubrey Byron: Well, I have to tell you, as someone who also came from print media you love to hear it, you know, maybe a local news subscription is the key to your investigation. In that case. 

MJ Banias: You figure out where stuff is and you just start looking at the local papers in that town and then and and honestly Here’s another one that we use often as well is archives Like I have had so many phone calls with like the sweetest old ladies who work Every Tuesday between 2 and 4 p.

MJ Banias: m. at this tiny little library in this tiny little midwestern town. And they only have enough money to pay her for like two hours a week. Because that’s all the money that, like, this municipality has given to this library and this archive to pay this, like, little lady to do it. And it’s like, I need information on the following case, right?

MJ Banias: It’s like, it was It was a shooting that occurred in 1986 in this town. I know this local paper covered it or would have covered it because it would have been a big story back then. These are the names of the people involved. Can you find it? And it’s like, Oh, you know, dear, I’ll go track that. And sure enough, two days later, I get an email with just like PDF files of like newspaper articles that.

MJ Banias: This, like, sweet old lady literally scanned into a scanner and, and sent me. And, and so, for sure, right? And suddenly you have more piece of this puzzle, right? You now have this individual’s, like, mother’s name, for example, because it was featured in the article. It’s like, okay, there’s another selector that we can hunt down and go after.

MJ Banias: So, yeah. Archives, newspapers, these are like the best when it comes to OSINT. And it also makes you feel like you’re doing something real, right? Like you’re not just sitting at a computer punching in stuff into like domain tools, and it’s feeding you all this data, right? You feel like, yeah, I’m like in there with a paper and an archive going through like old I gotta call Marge.

MJ Banias: I gotta 

Shannon Ragan: get back to Marge. 

MJ Banias: Yeah, it’s, it’s old school, and I kind of, I kind of dig it. But it does help at times, especially if Your clients have some, some of those clients have like some really weird asks. And just like, sure, we’ll try to figure it out. 

Aubrey Byron: You know, whenever we first meet guests who come on the show, we always ask them about their OSINT background.

Aubrey Byron: I have to say you had one of the most interesting class to OSINT that we’ve heard. Can you kind of tell us a little bit about that journey, aliens and all? 

MJ Banias: Aliens. Sure. Yeah. So, so I’m not your typical OSINT person, so I don’t come from a law enforcement background. I don’t come from a cyber security background and like that.

MJ Banias: Like, I, that is not my wheelhouse. I came from journalism. And, and my origin stories is I’ll skip over the parts that are boring. At first I was a teacher for like 12 years. I taught English and history and I learned that that wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. So I started getting into sort of writing and, and part of my academic career back in university was in culture studies.

MJ Banias: So, so my English background is not actually like in English literature. It’s in like cultural studies. So studying how cultures form, how they communicate, how languages form around given cultures, whatever. And my particular interest was in subcultures. So I was really into how. sort of predominantly Western subcultures form.

MJ Banias: So, you know, whether it’s like British pop punk subculture in the 1970s or goth culture in the 90s or whatever, that’s kind of what I was into. Like, how do these communities organize? How do they start developing their own ideologies and what Language frameworks and then all of that stuff and a friend of mine as after I’ve been teaching for about, I don’t know, seven, eight years said, Hey, you know, I’ve got a, I’ve got a group you should study if you’re interested in getting back into this stuff.

MJ Banias: And I said, sure. Yeah. Like, let me, who is it? And he said, you should talk to people who have been abducted by aliens. And I was like,

MJ Banias: is that and, and, and he was like, listen, it’s a hot topic right now. People love the alien stuff. And. No one’s really done a lot of research into the sort of subcultures that form around like UFOs and aliens and all of that stuff. There’s been some, but not a lot. And especially nothing kind of out of Canada and nothing out of sort of a younger kind of, at the time I was young.

MJ Banias: And at the time I was hip, apparently, though, you can tell by my clothing choices, maybe not so much anymore. And It was like, you know, it’s like this, this would be a very different angle because it’s being approached from a sort of a younger person and whatever, not some like stodgy academic who lives in university.

MJ Banias: I was like, okay, so I said, sure, I’ll give it a shot. So I started talking to people who believe that they were being abducted by aliens. And I wrote a book about it. It’s called UFO people. I’ve made no money on it. So, you know, please go buy a copy. And, and the UFO people was just this sort of subcultural analysis of, of people who believe in flying saucers and UFOs and alien abduction, all that stuff.

MJ Banias: But what it quickly led to was getting tapped by places like Vice and, and Vice Media and sorry, Vice Studios. And, and they were really interested in this topic from a cult perspective. So, so there’s always been sort of UFO cults and, and alien cults that have existed, but they were kind of becoming quite popular.

MJ Banias: Popular and, and significantly more robust, especially sort of 2016, 2017, you know, we had sort of Trump era Q. And on was becoming a big thing. You had kind of the merger of sort of alt right wing conspiracies and kind of the new age. So, so UFO cults and aliens and all that stuff became really popular in, in sort of certain circles.

MJ Banias: So, so I was, I was given the job of, of doing some writing on sort of the UFO subject as it was evolving. researching UFO cults digging into sort of how they made their money you know, tracking down people who knew some of these cult leaders prior to them becoming cult leaders. And, and it led to a whole bunch of documentaries that, that I worked on a bunch of articles that I wrote for Vice as well as some other publications.

MJ Banias: And, and that’s how I kind of got brought into the OSINT world because once you start doing those types of investigations, you start bumping into OSINT tools that can help you. So the, the, the immediate tool that I was introduced to was Hunchly. And, and. And it was like the producer on this, on this documentary was like, listen, if you’re doing any research, you’ve got to put it into hunchly.

MJ Banias: And I’m like, what’s hunchly. And she showed me how it all worked. And I was like, this is so cool. And I got a license and this is how I kind of got to know Justin sites a little bit. And then from there, it’s just sort of like the door opens to this OSINT universe out there that I kind of walked into.

MJ Banias: And, and here we are now. So, so that’s sort of, that’s the. It’s a long story to my origin into this world. 

Shannon Ragan: Beautiful, winding, UFO filled world. It’s so freaking 

MJ Banias: bizarre, I know. Like, I hear myself tell the story and I think of the audience being like, what the hell is going on? Like, this is the strangest thing.

MJ Banias: But, it’s, it’s, listen. It is what it is. 

Aubrey Byron: So do you have any other resources, tips, tools that you’re dying to share with newbie researchers or even like newspapers, ones that experience OSINTers might be overlooking? 

MJ Banias: Well, I mean, listen, if you don’t have a subscription to like ancestry or newspapers. com, you should, right?

MJ Banias: Because it’s like one of the biggest archives and repositories of this type of stuff. So, so it’s, that’s definitely like A thing and, and you can use it for free, but just, you know, the, the, the paid version is better because you can start like searching and exporting stuff way easier and it just makes a million times better.

MJ Banias: So newspapers. com is like a good place to start because they do have a lot of local press, but the, the, the, the thing I’ll say is, is they don’t have everything. And, and often what I do is I will go to whatever town I think I need to operate out of And I’ll just start kind of, like, just Google searching, like, all the local little community papers that exist in this, this area.

MJ Banias: Do the times line up with, like, the case in question? Like, were they in publication at the time? And then you just start reaching out to archives. Like, I mean, I think Google is, like, the main tool I use for everything. I just Google it. And, and nothing fancy, right? You just got to kind of think about, you know, would this have been covered?

MJ Banias: Or would Individuals who may know the person or know the thing you’re after, like, would that potentially be in the paper? And it’s surprising how well it’s worked to find people. Like I have, I, you know, we were doing a case where we had to find a law enforcement officer who sort of, He didn’t do anything wrong.

MJ Banias: It’s just we need to track him down because he may have had information about a particular situation. And he was, you know, long retired, whatever, but he was covered a lot in the local press because he was, you know, being interviewed by journalists for various crimes throughout like the 80s. So, you know, you find his name, you figure out, you know, he got married at one point and then he had kids and so you’re starting to piece together like, okay, this is all showing up in the local paper.

MJ Banias: This guy’s entire sort of life history during like the late 70s into the early 90s. It makes it a lot easier to not necessarily track him down, but if I know his son’s name, I can track his son down. 

Shannon Ragan: Right. 

MJ Banias: Contact the son and be like, hey. And he’s like, oh yeah, that’s my dad. Yeah, he’s, he’s like, like, down the road.

MJ Banias: Hold on. And it’s like, you know, he’ll like, text him and then he texts me back and then he calls me and it’s like, hey, are you looking for me? It’s like, I am. Way, hey, like, easy. I just have a question. Like, that’s, that’s how it. Like, this is just so easy to do, but I think it’s just thinking in that mindset from tools, from a tools perspective, I don’t know.

MJ Banias: I mean, it depends on your budget. You know, I love a good breach data toolkit that you pay for, like the hash or even the what’s the cheap one? Snus, snus base or something. Something like that. You know, those are, those are great little tools to have. Yeah. But yeah, it’s really tough because we use so many tools and I get access to tools to try and then, you know, I’ll use that for a while and then I’ll buy it or not.

MJ Banias: Just depending on whether I’ve got my budget line or whether I think it’s better than what I’m currently using. So I’m kind of in a weird situation. And a lot of times, to be honest, when you work for vice or when you work at like permanent records, you know, we have there’s money for that, right? Like you just You, you, you can afford that.

MJ Banias: Whereas in, if you’re a solo operator, you’re in a totally different boat So, so I, I don’t, I don’t know, you know, I mean, I, I would love to say like, you should get this tool cause it’s awesome, you know, I’ll give a shout out to OSINT Industries cause it’s great and OSINT Industries is really good too because, you know, you know, Nathan’s gonna hate me for saying this, but if you tell him you’re a journalist, he gives you free access sorry, Nathan, I apologize You get a few credits to use the service, right, because you’re a journalist and you’re, you know, you’re doing the good work that journalists do.

MJ Banias: So, so, you know, they’re way more willing to share. He’s gonna for sure hate me for saying that. Sorry. But yeah, like, listen, there’s so many good, Forensic OSINT is great from Ritu Gill her new sort of, it’s like Hunchly 2. 0 really cool tool. Love that thing. There’s so much for training if you’re looking for great, inexpensive training case scenarios they have some great, great yeah, it’s like 20 bucks and you get like a course and 

Aubrey Byron: yeah, 

MJ Banias: and, and it’s, it’s not like somebody sits there and is like, this is how you do this type of, you know, you don’t, this is how you search Facebook.

MJ Banias: Like they don’t do that. It’s like, here’s what you got to figure out. If you have questions, go to the Discord server and ask. Because that’s what OSINT’s like in real life. There’s no, like, training vi There’s a thumbs up that just came up. OSINT in real life isn’t like some training video. You have to go talk to people who you know and ask them for help.

MJ Banias: I don’t know how to do everything in OSINT. If I need help, I talk to my team. And if I, my team doesn’t know, I reach out to my sort of broader network and be like, Hey, have you ever done this with Gravatar and yanked this type of data from a Gravatar image? And is there a way of doing that? You know what I mean?

MJ Banias: And people are like, Oh yeah, yeah. There’s this one. Yeah, you do this. And that’s, that’s how it is in real life. And case scenarios is great for that because you have to literally have at least some charisma to go into a discord server and be like, yo, I need help. And they’ll help you. Like people like people are super nice.

MJ Banias: So, so, you know, there’s a lot of great stuff out there. It’s just, there’s like so much of it. I wish I could. I wish you could keep like I could go forever. 

Aubrey Byron: I think case was like almost bewildering at first because I’m so used to theory and you’ve been doing it for the first time or like I thought it would be all compact, you know, within their system where you don’t really leave.

Aubrey Byron: And then it was just like, go find the answer. I was like, Oh, me. Oh, I go. Okay. 

MJ Banias: Yeah, one thing it was, it was a case. They’re great. One of the things that really freaked me out was they for the purpose of their investigations, they will like plants. Data out onto the internet, right? Yeah, so it’s like a real life scavenger hunt in the sense that there’s like a Facebook account You have to track down and it’s a Facebook account They made and put out into the universe like it’s actually out there like you anyone can go visit at any time It doesn’t exist in some like contained atmosphere.

MJ Banias: It’s like out there and at first I was like This poor man is being just harassed by OSINT people, and the case, like, what, case, what are you guys doing? Like, is this even legal? And, you know, meanwhile, after two minutes, I’m like, oh no, this is totally planted. Because I realized, like, there’s no way this poor man would just, he would be, have so many questions.

MJ Banias: Facebook Messenger messages, it would be abusive. I have 

Aubrey Byron: wondered, and I should ask Ray or Espen, but I’ve wondered, like, if they tip off some of these small towns, like this one town in Pennsylvania is just like, What is going on with our Google traffic? Web traffic is spiked. 

MJ Banias: Yes, I know. I was gonna say, this, like, library that keeps, like, showing up, I think there’s, like, a library in one of them that you have to, like, look at the side of it.

MJ Banias: To see like graffiti, not graffiti, but a mural. I can imagine that library’s website has never had more clicks in its life. Like since it’s established, then when case has sent it there. So this is great. It’s good for, it’s good for the small town community. Thanks, Casey. 

Shannon Ragan: Well, before we go, I know you have a lot of interesting things going on, books, permanent record research.

Shannon Ragan: Is there anything you’d like to plug before we wrap up? 

MJ Banias: Yeah, totally. I mean, there’s, there’s sort of a few things that the first one is obviously permanent record. I mean, you know, where, where Brand new consulting advisory firm. We do everything from solving really big problems that are technical to issues over investigations or intelligence gathering.

MJ Banias: You know, maybe you, you, you’ve bumped into a wall or a snag and you’re not sure what to do, you know, we have some pretty novel and, and unique ways of thinking about OSINT whether it’s a technical solution or some good old fashioned gum shoeing. And, and, you know, we also have people who can, who can help.

MJ Banias: So, so, you know, the first thing is permanent record. As well as if you’re interested in sort of creating content around the OSINT space or intelligence space, or maybe you own a company that, that does OSINT work or engages in cyber security work or something like that. And you’re like trying to get your message out there, your story out there.

MJ Banias: We work in that field as well. So we’re sort of masters of OSINT and content. So for sure, I want to plug Permanent Record. If you want to visit the website, it’s www.permanentrecordresearch.com. A link has shown up. You can also just find me on LinkedIn and shoot me a message. That’s the first thing.

MJ Banias: The second thing is obviously was mentioned earlier in the show, but if you like science and technology I also co own a news publication called debrief. org. But that has nothing really to do with OSINT. It’s really more if you’re like into nerdy stuff like space propulsion and satellites and exoplanets.

MJ Banias: It’s kind of a news website that my geeky side was like, I love this stuff. And it’s not like investigating like the heinous acts that humanity perpetrates upon other members of the species. You know, the debrief is this nice place that you can like talk about like, Oh, we found a new planet. Sweet. So, so I want to put the debrief out there as well.

MJ Banias: Yeah, otherwise I’m all over the internet. So just, you know, find me on LinkedIn or Twitter or something. 

Shannon Ragan: Love it. We will. 

Aubrey Byron: Awesome. Well, thank you again so much for joining us, MJ. It was great talking to you. 

MJ Banias: It’s great. I, I, I truly appreciate being on the show. This is a lot of fun. 

Aubrey Byron: And thanks so much to our audience for listening.

Aubrey Byron: You can view transcripts links to find MJ and other episode info on our website. authentic8.com/needlestack. That’s authentic, but the number eight .com/needlestack. Be sure to let us know your thoughts on X formerly Twitter @needlestackpod and to like, and subscribe wherever you’re listening today.

Aubrey Byron: We’ll see you next time. Thank you.