INTHEBLACK October 2021 - Magazine - Page 49
Below: Handguns and assault rifles like those
used in recent mass shootings in the US are
being offered for sale in Australia by an arms
dealer trading via an electronic shopfront
found on the dark web.
One of the most popular types of corporate data
bought and sold on the dark web is login credentials.
“The organisation often doesn’t know that anything
has been stolen until they either detect something
going wrong inside their organisation, or they are
notified by law enforcement officers,” says Clarence
Chan, digital trust and cybersecurity director with
PwC Malaysia.
To find out if they have been compromised – or are
at imminent risk of doing so – organisations need to
enlist the help of a specialist third party. That’s because
access to dark web forums is restricted to users who
have gone through a vetting process.
“You may need to hack another organisation and
provide evidence of it, or produce malware that you then
submit to the forum so that everyone else can see it. That
will give you enough status to be admitted,” says Lemon.
Chan says, “We carry out searches through what is
called a ‘threat intelligence platform’, which has access
to some of these dark web sources. We try to find out
whether a particular company has had their information
breached and if that information is already up for sale.”
He cites the example of a company whose data was
recently put up for sale. PwC received an alert from an
intelligence threat platform that it subscribes to and
was able to inform the company immediately.
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“The cybercriminals might put out just a
snippet of the data set…to entice a buyer.
Sometimes it’s a scam and they don’t really have
the data, or they may have just a subset of it.”
Chan says that companies that store their data
in the cloud without configuring it properly can leave
themselves exposed.
“Think about securing your data as if you’re securing
the crown jewels – the most precious asset that belongs
to your organisation. If you cannot afford to lose your
data, spend more time, effort and funds on protecting it.”
A GAME OF CAT AND MOUSE
While much research has been undertaken on how to
unmask a cybercriminal on the dark web, policing the
ephemeral and global cybercrime cartels has proven
notoriously difficult.
“The scourge of cybercrime can only be tackled by
disrupting the fundamental business model, which
relies on anonymous payments,” says Kellermann. “You
need to disrupt the flow of money and undermine the
trust between these groups, so that they turn on each
other and it’s no longer a lucrative endeavour.”
He argues that greater regulation of digital
currencies is imperative. “I’m not saying that virtual
currencies created the epidemic of ransomware, but
the majority of cybercrime proceeds are laundered
through virtual currencies.”
At a minimum, he says the rules in the Financial
Action Task Force (FATF) on Money Laundering need
to be modernised so that an entity that is providing a
“THINK ABOUT
SECURING
YOUR DATA
AS IF YOU’RE
SECURING THE
CROWN JEWELS
- THE MOST
PRECIOUS
ASSET THAT
BELONGS
TO YOUR
ORGANISATION.”
CLARENCE CHAN,
PWC MALAYSIA
intheblack.com October 2021 49