About me

Hi all, my name is Alicja.

I've been an OSINT analyst for the past 5 years.

I was in your shoes - always had an investigative mindset since I was a child. Finding the right information effortlessly and following my intuition felt natural to me.

During the pandemic, I started participating in CTFs. With limited OSINT positions in Poland, I decided to create an opportunity for myself. I reached out to around 200 people on LinkedIn who had mentioned anything related to OSINT in Poland. Only one person responded, mentioning that someone had been looking for an OSINT specialist a few months earlier. I contacted that person, despite having no commercial experience. They gave me a test task: identifying scammers who were counterfeiting and selling baby food. I successfully completed the task, and that's how my journey began.

No formal courses, no commercial experience - just two CTFs and a huge passion. If I could create my place in this field, so can you.

This site and newsletter will grow and evolve with me.

🧠 Learning by Practice

My journey through hands-on experience OSINT CTFs, courses, public speaking.
All achievements since February 2020.

🎓 Courses & Certifications

• 09.2025 - Women4Cyber 6 months mentoring program.

• 09.2025 - EUCrimACon25, Haga, the Netherlands.

• 07.2025 - 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗼𝗻 𝗜𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗲 organized by Illicit Trade Group, the University of Groningen and Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

• 05.2025 - Influence Industry Mastercourse 2025 - a workshop to provide research methods, resources and skills for election monitoring.

• 05.2025 - DataHarvest’25 - The European Investigative Journalism Conference (4 days)

  Since I joined the investigative journalism team, I've been hearing that this is the best event to attend for gaining new knowledge.

• 04 - 05.2025 – Cyber Investigations Training Course - Global Investigative Journalism Network (6 weeks, online).
  Selected as 1 of only 25 participants worldwide! 🥳

  • Covered: Digital investigations fundamentals, Malware, spyware, DNS, disinformation, network analysis.

  • Led by: Craig Silverman (ProPublica), Jane Lytvynenko (Guardian, BuzzFeed News, Harvard), Etienne Maynier (Human Rights Watch), Luis Assardo (RSF, independent researcher).

• 01.2025 – SOC Path – LetsDefend (online).

• 06–08.2024 – Switchfire Pro Community Cybersecurity Accelerator

  Selected as 1 of 30 professionals globally – organized by Gary Ruddell.

• 10.2023 – Risk OSINT Intelligence – Unchartered - 2 days

  Illicit activity, risk assessment, and due diligence training.

• 03.2023 – Threat Intelligence Analyst (Foundation) – arcX

• 01.2022 – “Searching the Chinese Internet” – i-intelligence - webinar

• 05.2020 – Missing People OSINT – The OSINTion (Joe Gray) - 6h

• 02.2020 – OSINT Training – Niebezpiecznik.pl - a full day in Polish

🧩 Capture the Flag (CTF) Challenges

• 06.2025 - 1h Maltego Technologies Community CTF - Finished with my team 30th out of 151 teams.

• 06.2025 - 24h Diver OSINT CTF - organized by the Japanese community - My team ranked 82nd place out of 668 teams.
  The level was high, and the challenges covered a wide range of topics: GEOINT, company research, hardware, military, recon, transportation, and history.

• 04.2025 – GEOINT Challenge during inCyber Forum’25 (created by Sofia Santos) – Lille, France

  Only non-French speaker – [My Writeup]

• 11.2024 – Dragos ICS/OT & Network CTF - My team ranked 180th out of 700+ teams worldwide

• 08.2024 – Crypto CTF - Hosted by 디지털자산정책포럼 & Uppsala Security
  Supported by Interpol, GLACY countries, and Korean National Police

• 08.2024 – [Contestant] - OSINT Search Party - Trace Labs - [Badge earned]

• 07.2024 – Blue Team CTF – Cyber Twierdza - during Bsides Warsaw’24 (in person, in Polish)

• 11.2023 – AVTOKYO CTF - (online, in English) - Solo participant – This year, I was able to solve 7! tasks on my own - [My Writeup]

• 09.2023 – Gary Ruddell OSINT Challenges – [My Writeups 1 & 2]

• 05.2023 – OSINTMATICO Tracelabs CTF (Madrid) - Spanish edition - Only non-Spanish speaker - [Badge earned]

• 12.2022 – Advent of Cyber TryHackMe

• 05.2022 – Darkwebathon - Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative - (6h virtual hackathon) - [Badge earned]

• 12.2021 – Darkwebathon - Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative - (4 day virtual hackathon) – Rank in top 17 teams out of 56 teams worldwide - [Badge earned]

  • Focused on: Dark web, trafficking, blockchain forensics, CSAM.

• 10.2021 – AVTOKYO CTF - (online, in English) - Solo participant.

  It became my favorite CTF because of its high level of difficulty. This CTF has become a way for me to measure my growth and progress each year — how quickly and effectively I can find information, analyze it, and make decisions under time pressure. This year, I was able to solve two tasks on my own!

• 11.2020 – AVTOKYO CTF - organized by the Japanese community - (online, in Japanese only). Solo participant.

  AVtokyo used to be the drinking party right after the Black Hat Japan until 2007.

  Started off stuck on everything, but with some help from the Discord admins, I got through about half the tasks.

  • Focused on: IMINT, GEOINT, SIGINT.

• 10.2020 – [Judge] - National Missing Persons Hackathon - Trace Labs Australian edition - [Badge earned]

• 08.2020 – [Judge]- DEFCON USA OSINT Search Party - Trace Labs - [Badge earned]

• 07.2020 – OSINT Search Party V - Trace Labs- Ranked 9th out of 190 teams worldwide – (6-hour) - [Badge earned]

• 06.2020 – CYBAR2020 CTF - Deakin University (Australia) - Ranked 23rd out of 161 global teams, Among the first 20 participants to solve one of the hardest challenge

  • Focused on: IMINT, GEOINT, threat intel & COVID-19 investigations