A recent academic study made on the dark web by Micheal McGuire- a senior professor in criminology at Surrey University has revealed that businesses are vulnerable to malware attacks specifically targeted at them by hackers.
The darknet profits report which was commissioned by virtualization-based security firm Bromium says that firms based in the UK and relying on traditional security technologies were susceptible to malware attacks customized specifically at them.
McGuire released two reports based on the dark web out of which the first one happens to disclose the secrets of macroeconomics of cybercrime. It states that cybercrime revenues have reached $1.5 trillion. The second report states that social media enabled cybercrime has been generating $3.25 billion to the community of hackers on a yearly note.
According to the professor of Surrey University, cyber crooks were having a good idea on how well the companies were equipped when it comes to cybersecurity and were also aware of the soft targets which could help them infiltrate into corporate networks to obtain data.
Information related to corporate networks is now available online and the study shows that 60% of sellers were offering access to more than ten business networks all at a time- including email addresses and intelligence gathering from those accounts.
McGuire’s research also found that the recent website shutdowns made by the law enforcement agencies are only challenging cyber criminals creative thinking and pushing them off the dark web into the invisible net(web pages which are never indexed by search engines to keep the data of that website concealed to general web traffic).
As most of the communication takes place via encrypted apps such as Telegram the conversations and developments remain beyond the reach of the law enforcement which makes things very difficult for the cyber patrol to curtail the proceedings made on the dark web.
On a concluding note, businesses need to understand that they are up against specifically designed tools from the dark web and need to assess the value of data they are possessing and should adjust their defense strategies reportedly.
