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Operation Captura

May 2026 · OSINT UK CTF · 5 challenges

Eighteen (2pts)

Operation Captura recently launched a new campaign to search for 12 of the most wanted UK fugitives who are believed to be hiding in Spain. One of those fugitives is named Dean Eighteen.

Task: Identify the full date of birth of Dean Eighteen.

Answer Format:

  • Use the osintuk{answer} format.
  • Use DD/MM/YYYY format.
    e.g. osintuk{22/04/1971}

An easy enough start. A simple Google search (below) led to a Crimestoppers page with the flag. Query used: operation captura “Dean Eighteen”

Flag: osintuk{25/06/1977}

Middle Name (3pts)

Task: Identify Dean Eighteen’s middle name.

Answer Format:

  • Use the osintuk{answer} format.
    e.g. osintuk{John}

The aforementioned information from Crimestoppers said that he was previously the sole director of two companies, Transome Ltd and Blue Ferns Ltd. Given this and his UK origins, I searched for his name on Companies House. I found his name listed as a registered director with a matching birth month and year. This record includes his middle name: ‘James’.

Flag: osintuk{James}

Company Sums (3pts)

Dean Eighteen is known to be the director of some UK companies.

Task: Identify all the companies that Dean Eighteen has been a director of after the year 2010. Add up each of the company identifier numbers to complete this challenge.

Answer Format:

  • Use the osintuk{answer} format.
  • Use digits only without any special characters.
    e.g. osintuk{12345678}

According to Companies House records, Dean was appointed the director of three firms post 2010:

Green Stiles Limited (07803613) Transome Limited (07803826) Blue Ferns Limited (07803608)

Summed together, these give a total of 23411047.

Flag: osintuk{23411047}

Secretary (5pts)

In addition to the companies Dean has been a director of, references can be found to other companies where he was listed as a secretary.

Task: Identify 2 companies Dean was listed as a secretary for and provide the company identifier numbers, beginning with the one from the earliest stat date.

Answer Format:

  • Use the osintuk{answer} format.
  • Separate the numbers using an underscore.
    e.g. osintuk{12345678_12345678}

Companies House doesn’t have a native search function for secretaries, so this takes a little bit more legwork. I start by running a Google dork for his name followed by the word ‘secretary’, which seems to identify the first company: Sam Gunbie Limited.

The resulting Company Check listing gives the firm’s company identifier number as 03963206.

Beyond giving this number, this has actually proven more useful than first blush suggests. We now know that Company Check contains secretary information, and the format it appears to be in. We can now run a dedicated dork against this logic to try and find the next listing, but sadly, that turns out fruitless. My remaining Google searches also fail to turn up answers.

I then pivoted from Google to other search engines - Bing and DuckDuckGo - to try my luck there. Lo and behold, Bing picks up companydirectorcheck, which lists him as having been a secretary at 1st Comfort Limited (company number 06146836).

Sam Gunbie Ltd’s number is 03963206 (and is the earliest of the two firms, so comes first sequentially in the flag. 1st Comfort Limited is 06146836.

Flag: osintuk{03963206_06146836}

Mother’s Maiden Name (6pts)

It’s always interesting to see what information is floating out there on the internet that you may not expect to be public.

Task: Identify Dean’s mother’s maiden name.

Answer Format:

  • Use the osintuk{answer} format.
    e.g. osintuk{Jean}

Now this sounds challenging! I started by looking for basic information about Dean - this started by looking over news articles about him. Googling his full name (“Dean James Eighteen”) provided a Manchester Evening News article, stating him as originally being from Bolton. This gives me a potential geographical area in which to search for his mother. I also know he was born in 1977, which raises the prospect of looking at birth notices in UK newspapers from that era.

The GRO (General Records Office) house all birth and death records in the UK. This is a paid-for resource, and as such shouldn’t be used for these challenges. However, pulling the thread of birth records in the UK led to the discovery of FreeBMD, a website which transcribes birth, marriage and death records in the UK.

Searching for ‘Dean Eighteen’ - the convenience of his unusual surname not being lost on me - brings up cursory information from his birth record, including his mother’s maiden name: Atkinson.

Flag: osintuk{Atkinson}