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Justin Elze

CTO, Director of Research

EXPERIENCE
Justin Elze is currently serving as Chief Technology Officer at TrustedSec. Over his 8 years with the company as an InfoSec expert, Justin has used his vast expertise in enterprise penetration testing, network security, social engineering, and red teaming to identify clients’ vulnerabilities and ultimately, protect their technology infrastructure. Prior to becoming CTO, Justin held the roles of Director of Innovation, Research, and Advanced Testing and Principal Security Consultant for TrustedSec.

With more than a decade of experience in the IT industry, Justin’s expertise is increasingly sought out by others in the field. He has taught at Black Hat and spoken at DerbyCon, where he also served on the CFP Review Board, and is also featured as an industry leader in the published books Tribe of Hackers: Cybersecurity Advice from the Best Hackers in the World and Tribe of Hackers Red Team: Tribal Knowledge from the Best in Offensive Cybersecurity.

Prior to joining TrustedSec, Justin was a Senior Penetration Tester for Accuvant LABS, Optiv, Dell SecureWorks, and Redspin, where he led numerous red team engagements and penetration tests. He has worked across a variety of industries, including roles for ISPs, hosting companies, Department of Defense contracting companies, and consulting companies. Today, he leans on what he learned throughout his roles in various capacities to inform his choices as CTO and further his thought leadership in the industry.

Outside of his work experience and “ethical hacker” persona, Justin is passionate about building, tuning, and racing cars (and, yes, occasionally hacking them) and spending time with his 3 dogs. You can find his latest musings—security-related and otherwise—on his Twitter account, @HackingLZ.

Featured Blogs And Resources

Discover the blogs, analysis, webinars, and podcasts by this team member.

Blog May 18 2023

Walking the Tightrope: Maximizing Information Gathering while Avoiding Detection for Red Teams

Understanding network reconnaissance without detection is crucial in commercial testing, leveraging tools like BloodHound and scripts to gather valuable…

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Blog March 17 2023

Critical Outlook Vulnerability: In-Depth Technical Analysis and Recommendations (CVE-2023-23397)

Protect your organization from the Microsoft Outlook CVE-2023-23397 vulnerability with expert guidance and a simple remediation script.

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Webinars March 15 2023

Ask Me Anything: Penetration Testing Innovations and Insights

Join David Kennedy & Justin Elze for a live Q&A on penetration testing, tackling the ever-changing tactics used by attackers, and get answers to your burning…

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Webinars December 14 2021

Log4j: Live Update Webcast

Learn how to detect and respond to the Log4j vulnerability with experts from TrustedSec & Binary Defense, including David Kennedy, during our live webcast.

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Blog May 05 2026

The Defensive Stack is Exposed: LLMs, Reverse Engineering, and the End of Opaque Defense

Everyone is talking about LLMs finding zero days. That is not the only story. The story is what happens when you point these models at the defensive tools…

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Blog April 30 2026

ARP Around and Find Out: Hijacking GPO UNC Paths for Code Execution and NTLM Relay

TL;DR - If you have WriteGPLink on an Active Directory Organizational Unit (OU) and you’re on the same network segment as a computer within that OU, you can…

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Blog April 23 2026

Kerberos with Titanis

In this article, I’ll walk you through the basics of Kerberos, how to use Titanis for the different parts, and how to mitigate some problems.Titanis SetupI use…

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Blog April 17 2026

Mythos, Memory Loss, and the Part InfoSec Keeps Missing

InfoSec has a bad habit of acting like history started this morning. Something new lands, the industry loses its mind for a week, vendors start talking like…

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Blog April 16 2026

Dungeons and Daemons

Play Roll for Initiative. Hack the Planet.Dungeons & Daemons is a cybersecurity RPG that drops you into the boots of a Red Team operator on a live…

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Blog April 14 2026

Benchmarking Self-Hosted LLMs for Offensive Security

We put LLMs to the test—let's find out how good AI is at hacking! We walk through six simple challenges with intentionally naïve setups to test how capable…

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