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You’d be hard-pressed to find an organization that isn’t actively involved in network monitoring, a core aspect of everyday security workflows. Security teams are always monitoring their network activity for unusual traffic patterns that could indicate a threat.
However, if you were to ask the average security team if they monitor dark web traffic to and from their network, you might get a very different picture. The vast majority of organizations are not actively monitoring traffic originating from the dark web and reaching their public network, or traffic leaving their network and heading to the dark web. For security teams, this can be a significant missed opportunity to detect a threat or evolving attack in progress.
There are very few “innocent” reasons for this traffic, making it a highly effective indicator that an adversary is launching an attack on an organization. In addition to potentially sounding the alarm about an impending incident, dark web traffic can also provide vital information about exactly what malicious activity is taking place and what tactics the attacker is using.
The sooner cybersecurity professionals can spot malicious activity, the better their chances of stopping an attack before it even happens. That’s why the early warnings that dark web monitoring provides are so important to security teams who know what to look for.
Senior Threat Intelligence Engineer at dark web intelligence firm Searchlight Cyber.
Exploring the Dark Web
The anonymity offered by the dark web provides cybercriminals with ideal cover to conduct reconnaissance against the organizations they seek to attack. Cybercriminals often probe networks for vulnerabilities and weaknesses in order to identify their entry point for larger cyberattacks. Identifying traffic from the dark web to your network can therefore serve as an effective tripwire to identify malicious intent, allowing organizations to take preventative security measures.
In some cases, dark web traffic to your organization is harmless, especially if it’s going to public infrastructure like your website (this could be someone viewing your website via the dark web for privacy reasons). However, a sudden surge of dark web traffic to your network, especially parts that aren’t publicly accessible, could indicate that cybercriminals are actively gathering information about your defenses. By identifying this traffic early, analysts can gain critical insights into an adversary’s tactics and objectives based on the parts of the network they’re targeting, and take action to reduce the likelihood of an attack, such as by applying patches to the components receiving incoming dark web traffic.
Traffic to the Dark Web: An Indication of Insider Threats
In virtually all organizations, there is no legitimate reason why an employee should access the dark web from the corporate network. If this happens, consider it a major red flag. Employees surfing the dark web are putting the company at risk by exposing their organization to threats such as malware.
In more serious cases, this traffic could indicate insider threats, where employees intentionally compromise the organization’s security by engaging in illegal activities and using the dark web to communicate with cybercriminals. It is critical that organizations identify this outbound traffic as quickly as possible so they can begin investigations and eliminate the threat.
Malware on the way
Large data flows from the dark web to the corporate network could indicate that an attacker is installing malware.
In a recent real-world example, we helped a European government agency successfully identify and neutralize a cyber threat, based in part on detecting suspicious dark web traffic in the early stages of the attack. Traffic monitoring revealed that significantly more data was flowing to the organization’s IT infrastructure from the dark web than expected compared to the scale of the response.
Further investigation revealed that a web shell had been deployed by a hostile actor within the agency’s network. This early detection allowed for a rapid response and a potential cyberattack to be prevented.
Signs of data theft
Unusual data flow patterns from a corporate network to the dark web are also a potential signal that an attack is underway. Large-scale movement of data in this direction could indicate data exfiltration—the illicit transfer of sensitive information outside the organization’s perimeter. Awareness of such activity is essential for identifying data breaches and maintaining the confidentiality and integrity of an organization’s valuable data.
Data breaches can have devastating consequences, including significant financial loss, reputational damage and legal ramifications. By monitoring dark web traffic for signs of data breaches, an organization can gain valuable time in coordinating incident response and limiting the potential impact of a breach on their business, employees and customers.
Disable Dark Web Threats
Early detection and rapid response are paramount to limiting the impact of a cyberattack. Dark web traffic, whether it is coming into or out of a corporate network, can serve as an indicator of an impending threat. As it stands, this is an untapped opportunity for many organizations to take a more proactive approach to their cybersecurity.
Cybercriminals use the dark web because it hides their identity, but a security team can learn much more important things about their adversary by monitoring dark web traffic. It can give them an early warning that their adversary is targeting their organization for an attack and, crucially, provide them with information about the tactics the cybercriminal is using, giving them a unique opportunity to take mitigating measures and stop the attack in its tracks.
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