Many years ago, while gathering information to model a plausible scenario for a social engineering campaign, we noticed how powerful the insights from Johnny Long’s “Google Hacking for Penetration Testers” were.
We were struck by the amount of information that could be easily uncovered by a simple Google Dork and fascinated by the various OSINT techniques.

Our enthusiasm grew steadily. We began to interact and then contribute to the OSINT community. In our spare time we participated in various CTFs. From Jeopardy style competitions to #OSINTforGood events.

More and more people got caught up in the excitement. We went to courses and conferences where we met other colleagues with the same passion but from a different field, such as journalists, awareness specialists, or law enforcement officers.

We integrated these new friends into our CTF team and realized how much we could benefit from each other. After one of these competitions, beer in hand, we discussed how to increase the number of members in this group and perhaps create a Swiss OSINT community. It would definitely take some time, effort, creativity, and research to get this ambitious project going.

Fortunately, the seed of the idea was planted and continued to grow independently in our minds. We discussed it several times, lunch after lunch, and in the end the initial idea turned into what we proudly call today:

OSINT Switzerland