Businesses as Beneficiaries of the Dark Web
April 28, 2016
Who makes money off the Dark Web? Vice’s Motherboard covers this in a recent article, The Booming and Opaque Business of Dark Web Monitoring. Much coverage exists on the cybercriminals using Tor, but this article describes the two types of threat intelligence monitoring businesses which specialize in crawling the Dark Web. The first approach is algorithm-based, such as the method used by Terbium Labs’ Matchlight product which scans and scours marketplaces for sensitive data or intellectual property. The alternative approach used by some companies is explained,
“The other tactic is a more human approach, with analysts going undercover in hacking forums or other haunts, keeping tabs on what malware is being chatted about, or which new data dump is being traded. This information is then provided to government and private clients when it affects them, with each monitoring company digesting it in their own particular way. But, there is a lot of misleading or outright fabricated information in the dark web. Often, particular listings or entire sites are scams, and forum chatter can be populated with people just trying to rip each other off. For that reason, it’s not really good enough to just report everything and anything you see to a customer.”
Recent media coverage mostly zeroes in on cybercrime related to the Dark Web, so this article is a refreshing change of pace as it covers the businesses capitalizing on the existence of this new platform where stolen data and security breaches can find a home. Additionally, an important question about this business sector is raised: how do these Dark Web monitoring companies valuable leads from scams aimed at deceiving?
Megan Feil, April 28, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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