Forensic Pathways have developed their own in-house ‘dark web crawler’ for monitoring the dark web for potential data breaches and/or threats. The software has been built to refine and enhance your threat intelligence and risk management process. By incorporating the dark web monitoring into your processes you increase your visibility of the dark web and reduce the risk of exposure to your company, your data and your reputation.
The dark web lives up to its name, creating a platform that allows users to operate on the web whilst remaining in the shadows and avoiding detection from law enforcement. A community of cyber criminals now thrives on the dark web due to the levels of anonymity and lack of traceability reducing risks for criminals, who have created a community of advertising, discussing, buying and selling of illicit goods and personal information.
From guns to guides, stolen data to sensitive, confidential information, there is a market and a marketplace for everything; you can find a buyer and seller for almost anything illicit. This can create a crisis for businesses.
There are established marketplaces operating much like eBay, where sellers advertise what they have for sale, allowing buyers to review the offering and the sellers, all of whom are graded and ranked, helping other potential buyers to identify ‘legit’ sellers.
Figure 1 An example of an advert for a banking template found on a popular dark web marketplace. Identity of exploited company protected due to being a house hold name
Figure 2 An example of the review and ranking system of vendors
There are forums dedicated to discussing, sharing and selling valuable and exploitable information, from identified network frailties to stolen company data.
Unlike the ‘open web’ (the internet we use daily), the dark web is not indexed. This means that it can be very difficult to search for and detect specific information. However, as this labyrinth of information and intelligence cannot be neglected, Forensic Pathways opted to deliver a solution that could revolutionize how we identify and process intelligence found on the dark web.
Drawing on over 10 years of due diligence and open source intelligence experience, the company recognized that replicating services and techniques utilized in open web due on the dark web would create new opportunity for the company and its clients.
After conducting rigorous analysis on consumer needs, market trends and competitor offerings, Forensic Pathways have launched a new dark web monitoring and investigations solution that will significantly increase the scope and visibility of intelligence, offering clients a more robust, thorough and proactive solution to brand reputation and threat intelligence.
Forensic Pathways have developed our own in-house crawler, capable of crawling, harvesting and storing data that is searchable through a secure, password protected search engine. This allows users to not only draw on historic findings and locate possible threats, it also allows users to create an alerting system that will identify specific search terms and key words. Furthermore, our crawler is not restricted. There is no ‘focus crawl’ – we feel that vital information could be hidden away in the cracks and crevasses of the dark web, and so we have developed a solution that will blanket search multiple platforms within the dark web, ensuring investigations cover all angles and provide maximum visibility.
Figure 3 An example of the dark web search engine in use
Figure 4 The above search for ‘bitcoin’ found over 500,000 items in 38 milliseconds
This is just the beginning. Forensic Pathways have a very exciting pipeline and have ambitious aspirations for delivering the most innovative, thorough and robust dark web monitoring and investigation services. The capabilities the company will be adding to the current solution will revolutionise how we use the dark web as part of our threat intelligence and risk management processes.
