Hello and welcome back to salted hash, I'm your host Steve Regan today. We are at the RSA Conference and I'm talking with insights
We're going to look at the dark web. I'll be right back
Welcome back as I said, my name is Steve Reagan senior staff writer at CSO online and this is salted hash
I am with a lot al brats I get that right. Yeah, excellent. I got it, right
I spelled it right we got it right as it works
we are talking about the dark web and there is a lot of I
Don't want to say confusion
but I would say there's a lot of hype and a lot of
frustration that goes out because when you hear dark net and dark web it did you imagine a guy with a hoodie on and he's
Hovering over keyboard and you think the world has ended but in reality, it's not it's a marketplace
It's a business and for a lot of people it's a way of life
so we're going to take a quick tour and we're gonna look at some things and
I do believe the first thing you're going to show me is a guy who's a jack of all trades and a master of none
and he's got himself a nice little
Nice little setup here in an advertising service. So let's take a look at that
So one of the most important things to know about, you know
The darkroom in general and why it's interesting and important is because the fact that it's it lowers the barriers for entry
Mm-hmm to engage in hacking and cyber criminal activity
He's very low tech very low to the dollar for some crime kids that people are
exactly exactly like, you know
There are a lot of outsourcing today for different type of services that we know from a day to day life
so also an underground communities there's a lot of outsourcing so you can use
outsourcing services to pull off cyberattacks and hacking and
for it's not what you see here is a website that was
opened by a
Hacker offering is hacking services right here for hire right even got a nice
Logo and
Yeah, yeah and you guys all from Google like hacking so a nice design and the thing is telling you look
You have someone you hate you have someone who hurts you you want to get back to him. Talk to me
Ok, I can pull it right
Someone a cyber bullied you owe someone scammed you
Or someone just you know, annoyed you talk to me and I'll take care of it. So he's offering his services
With all the things he knows to do. It's a lot of services to like, you can pretty much hit air area
it seems like a
jack-of-all-trades
And
Here you can actually see
The prices of everything right so you can see that if you want him to hack a web server. That's 220 dollars
Not not too expensive and actually the prices got a lot lower in
The past couple of years because there are more and more services like that and there's competition
Surprise go a bit lower. And today anyone can afford the cyber attack you too can afford a criminal enterprise
Exactly something like that
So you can look at the prices. Obviously, it showed in Bitcoin because it wants to get a non anonymously and
You pay in Bitcoin. He just you know do the operation for you and you can put your email address
You don't get and the service you desire. He's out back. It'll get back to you offering your services
So it's that easy to engage in cyber crime and hacking activities
You just go to his website a on the dark web obviously, but you go to his website
Click, what do you want to do put in your email?
They start talking with them and hiring so guys like this are kind of outliers there
Generally distrusted by the hardened criminal element that you see on the dark web. They're there
Of course, it's not to say that this isn't an invalid service
this guy probably will do what he says if you pay him to write about a Bitcoin, but going back to your
premise that we have
Almost an entire economy around outsourcing on crime for the dark web
One of the things that stands out it how resilient the criminal economy online is has become these days
when you're you're you're looking around and you're talking to your customers, is there any it anytime when you you come across something that just
Wow, I I didn't know that was a thing
What was your Wow moment looking at the dark web when you you started exploring it? Yeah, so
First of all, the dark web is actually a platform anytime to monetize cyber criminal activities, right?
So a lot of things that we we see and is big love
Our customers is when their data is offered for sale, right? This is when they start panic. Yeah, yeah
This is when they start panic right someone has my database for sale
What did you know, right why do you know someone hacked me you sold the data is no selling it
whoever it's right now and I think that
It's very important to understand where the next step you do when something like that happens
if there are some professional that knows how to deal this type of cases, for example, if we talk about
some hacker
You know
This is a forum
Okay
but
You know people offering all type of things for sale sharing stuff sharing information about how to hack places
publishing things they've managed to achieve through hacking and
the first step is to actually
Address this person publishing this things offered for sale and and talk to him and ask him
What do you have? How did you get it? And
utilize different types of
avatars
There are also vetted and has good reputation to talk to him and actually get the information about
this
Data that was stolen or this database offer for sale. So this forum that you're showing me here
It's it's pretty typical of mostly other forums
So when you look at this forum, like you just said you tend to look at
You know mentions for your clients and your customers what happens when you find your customers data in forums like this
What do you do? What's the first thing that happens? So
Again, this is a cyber criminal
Commune right and you cannot trust anyone there. So the first step is always
Verification of validation and actually the understanding of what happened here
So let's take a typical use case from the document that can be interesting for our customers
So now someone is offering your database for sale on the underground community, right?
So first of all don't panic because many time this is what happens. Are you start panic, right?
Someone has my database the second step is to understand how you do this validation verification
and this is a way you need to have in place the abilities or a supplier that can do you mean tactility x' and
Engage with the threat tech tour and try to understand what type of data is in there. And where did he get it from?
How much does it cost and any type of information that can help you understand?
What's in there the second step and it's what I always say to customers. Don't rush to purchase it, right?
Complete the validation process. So the next step will always be to get a sample
Okay, like you go to any business and before you pay a lot of money
You want a sample you want to proof of concept proof of value the same thing on the underground community?
It's a business before you purchase
You have to write to us for example, and then once you get the sample, two three five records
You have the ability understand was a really heck. Is it really my data?
Maybe it came from a public source and based on that. You can really assess the threat
I understand you were hacked
You were not hacked and what are the next steps you need to do in order to mitigate a threat?
Yep, because a lot of people when they find their stuff
You know floating around or they see a list. It's like put up on paceman or something and they see there they go
Oh, I've been hacked when in reality
It's more more likely it's a culmination of things have there had been any customers that have seen, you know
something come up on the data and
Even though they they started to panic and they walked away from it. Have they found?
Enlightenment, I guess would be a good way for a but they now know just because you see it on the darknet doesn't mean to
Panic, I mean, what's that?
Light switch moment for them when the light comes on and they're just like okay we can do this. How's that work? Is it?
Almost instantaneous, or is it something they have to work up towards?
So it's definitely that's something you need to work out towards like you said. There's a lot of hype around dark web and
cybercrime and
apt there are a lot of hype around that and
it's really really important for them to have this person who have experience with these type of things and
poor for them to understand that there are a
Work flow that you need to go through and this workflow will help you understand what happened
Yeah, and it many times, you know, it's people were saying stuff
They didn't do right just to get reputation or just because they know that this organization is going to panic
Yeah, and they can get money out of its panic when actually if you have you know
The expert is in place and you can do go through the process of validation understanding what happened there, you know
You can get a collision that it's not such a big risk or that it's very easy to mitigate
Nice nice. Well, listen, thanks for taking the time to talk to us today. I really appreciate it
Thanks for the tour of pretty neat to see some of those sites haven't seen that before
But if anybody wants to look up and learn more about you, where can they find you online?
So you can just google insights and find us online
very easy
Great talking to you. This vid salted hash. I'm your host Steve Reagan. Stay tuned for more stuff from RSA. We'll see you soon
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