The dark web refers to the part of the Internet that can only be accessed by using specialized software, such as Tor. It has become a nexus for various criminal activities, including drugs and weapons trafficking, distribution of illegal pornography, and data theft (Schäfer et al., 2019). The latter activity can be especially damaging to businesses, which risk losing critical data without even realizing it. If bad actors later use the stolen data, this can result in serious financial, reputational, and other repercussions for companies and clients. Specialized tools like crawlers are needed to monitor potential illegal activities conducted through the dark web (Ferry et al., 2019). This case study will demonstrate the importance of dark web monitoring for businesses.
A company began to suspect hacking following suspicious activity in its network, but could not tell what data was affected. As a precaution, the company requested a dark web monitoring scan. The service deployed an automatic crawler to collect data from known dark web forums and marketplaces. Other dark web resources were identified during the search and added to the database. Analytics tools were used to identify relevant information and relay it to human analysts. They then quickly confirmed that critical client data was stolen and offered for sale on several hacker forums. As a result, the company was able to initiate damage control, notifying its clients and law enforcement and mitigating the harm from the data loss. Furthermore, the monitoring service was able to warn the company about the security exploits discussed on dark web forums, enabling it to remove those vulnerabilities from its system.
The dark web poses a serious security threat to businesses by allowing bad actors to coordinate their activities beyond the reach of conventional web surveillance. However, with the right tools and expertise, dark web monitoring services can effectively investigate hidden websites to uncover security breaches and data thefts. By relying on dark web monitoring, businesses can counteract the effects of cybercrime before they can cause more damage and enhance their security systems to keep it from happening in the future.
References
Ferry, N., Hackenheimer, T., Herrmann, F., & Tourette, A. (2019). Methodology of dark web monitoring. In Proceedings of the 11th international conference on electronics, computers and artificial intelligence (ECAI). IEEE.
Schäfer, M., Fuchs, M., Strohmeier, M., Engel, M., Liechti, M., & Lenders, V. (2019). BlackWidow: Monitoring the dark web for cyber security information. In T. Minárik, S. Alatalu, S. Biondi, M. Signoretti, I. Tolga, & G. Visky (Eds.) 11th international conference on cyber conflict (CyCon): Silent battle. (pp. 499-519). IEEE.