Preparing for the 2026-06 Global OSINT Search Party CTF

Our quarterly Global OSINT Search Party CTF is coming up on June 6!  In this post, we’ll cover some important updates and information you need to know as you prepare. 

• Student Discounts
• Becoming a Coach
• L-100 Training
• Scoring System Changes

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Student Discounts

Thanks to a generous donation from HeirRight, students are able to receive 50% off of CTF tickets. Interested students should have their professor/instructor email students@tracelabs.org, preferably prior to tickets going on sale. 

Becoming a Coach

All past CTF Participants are invited to level up and become CTF coaches! The process for becoming a coach is outlined in our Coach Guideline. Coach sign-ups for this upcoming CTF are already underway and all previous coaches and newly trained coaches were already sent an invite. If you didn’t get the invite, jump into our Discord and open a ticket in #get-support so we can sort out your contact information. All coaches must be active in the Discord in order to get real-time updates during events and to communicate with their assigned teams. 

L100: Search Party Basics Webinar

With the roll-out of the new scoring system, we have added two L100 webinars to the schedule for May. L100 is NOT a required training, but it does earn a badge, which stacks with the L150 and L200 badges. L100 is essentially an overview of Trace Labs and CTF operations and the May version will cover the scoring changes listed below. Everyone who registers for the June CTF will receive a discount on the May L100 webinars too! Tickets for this and all of our events are available at https://www.tracelabs.org/tickets.

Scoring System Changes

Based on trends, patterns, and feedback, we convened a group to review and revise our scoring system. The group was led by Timon Stalder, Co-Leader of our Support Ops Department, with participation from many of our Senior, Master, and Legacy Coaches. We really appreciated the effort they put into this! 

You can view the full update at https://docs.tracelabs.org/searchparty/searchparty-scoring-system. Here are the significant changes:

• Created a No Point Value category, worth 0 points. This is for things that are from unallowed sources. Sometimes teams uncover a piece of information from a disallowed source that they feel strongly should be in the report to law enforcement, or that they used to pivot and want to show their line of thinking. If it's from a non-allowed source, it won't ever get points, but using this category will let it be included in reports. Remember that even disallowed sources must use Passive Reconnaissance. Active recon is immediate grounds for disqualification.
• Adjusted the Friends and Family categories, which are now worth the same 10 points. On-going romantic relationships are now clarified to be in the "family" category.
• Employment moved from 15 points to 50 points, with clarification of what belongs here. Co-workers are classified as "friends" not employment.
• Basic Subject Info: no changes
• Advanced Subject Info is now worth 250 points.
• Day Last Seen is now worth 250 points.
• Advancing the Timeline is now worth 1000 points. We clarified the language around what is expected for supporting information. This category now requires approval by staff or an admin coach, so it will go through an additional layer of review before being approved. This means it will take longer and must have excellent documentation.
• Location no changes. Clarified that this requires leadership team approval in order to award, so it will go through an additional layer of review before being approved. Locations are very significant and very rare awards, so we want to ensure they are thoroughly reviewed and well documented.

If you have questions about any of these, the #general channel in our Discord is a great place to ask. 

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