"Freedom of Information - Hacking the Human Black Box"

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Presented at BSidesCanberra 2018 by

Elliott Brink

FOIA (otherwise known as the Freedom of Information Act or FOI/Freedom of Information in Australia) are government-based initiatives to permit the public to request information on various government records. In practice, these acts enable transparency of the operations of government to the masses with relative ease. For the past couple of years I've been hacking this human black box in order to determine the boundaries/limitations of what could be considered potentially malicious requests. I have been performing various technology-focused FOI requests in an attempt to answer one simple argument: Can you utilise freedom of information to enumerate technical information from government agencies? Do you ever wonder if a government employee would provide you with such information if you asked really really nicely? Let's find out together! Together we will study case studies of actual FOI requests performed on Australian and USA-based government institutions and (some) of the data revealed. Attendees will gain practical knowledge about: what FOI is, the caveats of FOI, how can you utilise FOI on red team engagements and other open source intelligence gathering activities and finally (for the gov employees) how to monitor for and prevent such attacks against your institution.