Alethe Denis MEMBER_OF Critical Insight
Alethe says she works for Critical Insight, where she focuses on expanding social-engineering engagements.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“I work for a company called Critical Insight.”
Episode
21 December 2021 Official episode · Official transcript
social engineering
The episode follows Alethe Denis’s development as a social engineer, including her participation in DEF CON’s Social Engineering Capture the Flag contest and her later work conducting phishing, vishing, and physical social-engineering assessments.
Topics: Social engineering, Open-source intelligence (OSINT), Phishing and vishing assessments, Pretexting and impersonation, Google dorking, Credential harvesting, Security-awareness training, Physical security and onsite social-engineering assessments, DEF CON Social Engineering Capture the Flag, Public-record and social-media reconnaissance, Employee susceptibility testing, BitLocker and endpoint information elicitation, Use of geolocation data and workplace photographs in reconnaissance
Links published on the Darknet Diaries episode page. Not LLM output.
No Sources heading on this episode page.
Qualified statements from this episode, not graph facts.
Alethe Denis MEMBER_OF Critical Insight
Alethe says she works for Critical Insight, where she focuses on expanding social-engineering engagements.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“I work for a company called Critical Insight.”
Alethe Denis USES social engineering
Alethe works in social engineering and describes it as her professional specialty.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“my core interest is growing our social engineering side”
Alethe Denis USES Vishing
Alethe says her work includes vishing engagements.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“to do more vishing, phishing, and more actual social engineering physicals”
Alethe Denis USES phishing
Alethe conducts phishing engagements as part of her social-engineering work.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“to do more vishing, phishing”
Alethe Denis USES physical social engineering
Alethe says she performs onsite physical social-engineering engagements.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“more actual social engineering physicals where we’re doing the engagements onsite”
Alethe Denis USES Open Source Intelligence Gathering
Alethe uses public-record research and other open sources to investigate people, properties, and target companies.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 107 Details
“This is where she picked up some OSINT skills.”
Alethe Denis USES Google dorking
Alethe uses Google dorking to find documents and information supporting a pretext.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“Usually this involves a lot of Google dorking”
Alethe Denis USES Pretexting
Alethe develops and uses pretexts to impersonate employees or trusted vendors during calls.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“I’ve kinda got an idea of what type of pretext I’m gonna use”
Alethe Denis USES credential harvesting
In phishing engagements, Alethe sets up pages to collect credentials and tests whether she can capture them.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“I will set up a landing page that is to collect credentials”
Alethe Denis USES security awareness training
Alethe consults on and delivers security-awareness training for clients.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“I started doing security awareness training”
Alethe Denis USES penetration testing
Alethe discusses social-engineering and security-assessment work in the context of penetration testing, though she says she initially lacked full-scale penetration-testing skills.
Explicit Confidence 95% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“I was lacking a lot of the full-scale pen-testing skills at that point”
Alethe Denis USES Glassdoor
Alethe uses Glassdoor to learn about company culture and employee experiences during target research.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“I’ll move into company review websites like Glassdoor and Indeed to learn about company culture”
Alethe Denis USES Indeed
Alethe uses Indeed as a company-review and target-research source.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“company review websites like Glassdoor and Indeed”
Alethe Denis USES LinkedIn
Alethe uses LinkedIn to identify employees of target companies during OSINT research.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 107 Details
“going to the company’s LinkedIn and seeing who works there”
Alethe Denis USES Instagram
Alethe uses Instagram location searches to find geotagged workplace photographs and information such as badges and exposed monitors.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“I will put that address into Instagram, into the location search”
Alethe Denis USES Turbo Pascal
Alethe learned to code in Turbo Pascal during school.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“I learned to code in Turbo Pascal.”
Alethe Denis USES LORD
Alethe played LORD, or Legend of the Red Dragon, on her school's LAN and wanted to code to hack the game.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“hack this game that we would play just on the LAN at the school that was called LORD”
Alethe Denis USES IRC
Alethe spent years communicating with people in IRC chat rooms.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“for years, I had been hanging out in IRC chat rooms”
Alethe Denis ASSOCIATED_WITH Dragonfly Security
Alethe says she began consulting through Dragonfly Security and built a local client base.
Explicit Confidence 97% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“I started consulting through Dragonfly Security”
Critical Insight USES penetration testing
Critical Insight provides penetration testing to clients.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 107 Details
“Critical Insight which does provide penetration testing to clients”
Critical Insight USES social engineering
Critical Insight provides social-engineering engagements to clients.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 107 Details
“as well as social engineering engagements”
Alethe Denis ASSOCIATED_WITH Social Engineering Capture the Flag
Alethe competed in the Social Engineering Capture the Flag contest and later won it.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alethe Denis EP 107 Details
“Then they announced that I won”
Alethe Denis OTHER Defcon black badge
Alethe received a DEF CON black badge after winning the social-engineering contest.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Host EP 107 Details
“Defcon’s gonna give her a black badge.”
Works mentioned in the transcript. Distinct from show-note sources.
Model gpt-5.6-luna · prompt 1.5.19 · schema 1.5.19 · 2026-09-13T07:24:08.139560+00:00