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A global mobile espionage campaign collecting a trove of sensitive personal information from victims since at least 2012 has accidentally revealed itself—thanks to an exposed server on the open internet. It's one of the first known examples of a successful large-scale hacking operation of mobile phones rather than computers. The advanced persistent threat (APT) group, dubbed Dark Caracal , has claimed to have stolen hundreds of gigabytes of data, including personally identifiable information and intellectual property, from thousands of victims in more than 21 different countries, according to a new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and security firm Lookout. After mistakenly leaking some of its files to the internet, the shadowy hacking group is traced back to a building owned by the Lebanese General Directorate of General Security (GDGS), one of the country's intelligence agencies, in Beirut. "Based on the available evidence, it's likely...

IT and cybersecurity teams are so inundated with security notifications and alerts within their own systems, it's difficult to monitor external malicious environments – which only makes them that much more threatening.  In March, a high-profile data breach hit national headlines when personally identifiable information connected to hundreds of lawmakers and staff was leaked on the dark web. The cybersecurity incident involved the DC Health Link, an online marketplace that administers health plans for members of Congress and Capitol Hill staff. According to news reports, the FBI had successfully purchased a portion of the data – which included social security numbers and other sensitive information – on the dark web.  Because of the prominence of the victims, the story was picked up by a slew of media outlets that rarely cover dark web-related cybersecurity crimes. The story not only shed light on one of the most dangerous aspects of the internet, it reminded us that the dar...

Do you know: There is a vast section of the Internet which is hidden and not accessible through regular search engines and web browsers. This part of the Internet is known as the Deep Web , and it is about 500 times the size of the Web that we know. What is DEEP WEB? Deep Web  is referred to the data which are not indexed by any standard search engine such as Google or Yahoo. The 'Deep Web' refers to all web pages that search engines cannot find, such as user databases, registration-required web forums, webmail pages, and pages behind paywalls. Then, there's the Dark Web or Dark Net – a specific part of that hidden Deep Web. Deep Web and Dark Web are the intriguing topics for the Netizens all around. But when you hear the term 'Deep Web' or 'Dark Web,' you usually categorize them into one. If yes, then you are wrong. What is DARK WEB? Dark Web is where you can operate without been tracked, maintaining total anonymity....

Discover how cybercriminals behave in Dark Web forums- what services they buy and sell, what motivates them, and even how they scam each other. Clear Web vs. Deep Web vs. Dark Web Threat intelligence professionals divide the internet into three main components: Clear Web - Web assets that can be viewed through public search engines, including media, blogs, and other pages and sites. Deep Web - Websites and forums that are unindexed by search engines. For example, webmail, online banking, corporate intranets, walled gardens, etc. Some of the hacker forums exist in the Deep Web, requiring credentials to enter. Dark Web - Web sources that require specific software to gain access. These sources are anonymous and closed, and include Telegram groups and invite-only forums. The Dark Web contains Tor, P2P, hacker forums, criminal marketplaces, etc. According to Etay Maor, Chief Security Strategist at Cato Networks , "We've been seeing a shift in how criminals communicate and co...

On April 5, 2023, the FBI and Dutch National Police  announced the takedown of Genesis Market , one of the largest dark web marketplaces. The operation, dubbed "Operation Cookie Monster," resulted in the arrest of 119 people and the seizure of over $1M in cryptocurrency. You can read the FBI's warrant  here  for details specific to this case. In light of these events, I'd like to discuss how OSINT can assist with dark web investigations. The Dark Web's anonymity attracts a variety of users, from whistleblowers and political activists to cybercriminals and terrorists. There are several techniques that can be used to try and identify the individuals behind these sites and personas. Technical Vulnerabilities While not considered OSINT, there have been instances when technical vulnerabilities have existed in the technology used to host dark websites. These vulnerabilities may exist in the software itself or be due to misconfigurations, but they can sometimes revea...

It's finally confirmed — In a coordinated International operation, Europol along with FBI, DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and Dutch National Police have seized and taken down AlphaBay , one of the largest criminal marketplaces on the Dark Web. But not just AlphaBay , the law enforcement agencies have also seized another illegal dark web market called HANSA , Europol confirmed in a press release today. According to Europol, both underground criminal markets are "responsible for the trading of over 350,000 illicit commodities including drugs, firearms and cybercrime malware." On July 4th, AlphaBay suddenly went down without any explanation from its administrators, which left its customers in panic. Some of them even suspected that the website's admins had pulled an exit scam and stole user funds. However, last week it was reported that the mysterious shut down of the dark web marketplace was due to a series of raids conducted by the international authorities....

A team of cybersecurity researchers today outed a little-known Indian IT firm that has secretly been operating as a global hackers-for-hire service or hacking-as-a-service platform. Based in Delhi, BellTroX InfoTech allegedly targeted thousands of high-profile individuals and hundreds of organizations across six continents in the last seven years. Hack-for-hire services do not operate as a state-sponsored group but likely as a hack-for-hire company that conducts commercial cyberespionage against given targets on behalf of private investigators and their clients. According to the latest report published by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, BellTroX—dubbed ' Dark Basin ' as a hacking group—targeted advocacy groups, senior politicians, government officials, CEOs, journalists, and human rights defenders. "Over the course of our multi-year investigation, we found that Dark Basin likely conducted commercial espionage on behalf of their clients against oppo...

Dark Web is right now going through a very rough time. Just two days ago, a hacker group affiliated with Anonymous broke into the servers of Freedom Hosting II and took down more than 10,000 Tor-based .onion dark websites with an alarming announcement to its visitors, which said: " Hello, Freedom Hosting II, you have been hacked. " Freedom Hosting II is the single largest host of underground websites accessible only through Tor anonymising browser that hosts somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of all sites on the Dark Web, anonymity and privacy researcher Sarah Jamie Lewis estimated . Besides defacing all Dark Web sites hosted on Freedom Hosting II with the same message and stealing its database, the hackers also demanded a ransom for 0.1 Bitcoin (just over $100) to return the compromised data to the hosting service. Now, it has been reported that the stolen database from Freedom Hosting II has publicly been released online to a site hosted on the Tor network, wh...

Learn about critical threats that can impact your organization and the bad actors behind them from Cybersixgill's threat experts. Each story shines a light on underground activities, the threat actors involved, and why you should care, along with what you can do to mitigate risk.  The deep and dark web, otherwise known as the cybercriminal underground, is where malicious actors gather to exchange plans, sell goods or services, and recruit others to help in their illicit activities. Grasping how it functions and the intelligence it offers is crucial for proactively safeguarding your environment against attacks, as it is in these spaces that threat actors frequently reveal their intentions prior to launching an attack. The State of the Underground 2024 Our annual State of the Underground 2024 is a detailed report that sheds light on the evolving underworld of cybercrime, exploring trends and behaviors observed within the deep, dark web during 2023. This comprehensive analysis, c...

The threat actor known as  Dark Pink  has been linked to five new attacks aimed at various entities in Belgium, Brunei, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam between February 2022 and April 2023. This includes educational institutions, government agencies, military bodies, and non-profit organizations, indicating the adversarial crew's continued focus on high-value targets. Dark Pink, also called Saaiwc Group, is an advanced persistent threat (APT) actor believed to be of Asia-Pacific origin, with  attacks   targeting  entities primarily located in East Asia and, to a lesser extent, in Europe. The group employs a set of custom malware tools such as TelePowerBot and KamiKakaBot that provide various functions to exfiltrate sensitive data from compromised hosts. "The group uses a range of sophisticated custom tools, deploys multiple kill chains relying on spear-phishing emails," Group-IB security researcher Andrey Polovinkin  said  in a technical report ...

In a new report into the global cybersecurity industry's exposure on the Dark Web this year, global application security company, ImmuniWeb , uncovered that 97% of leading cybersecurity companies have data leaks or other security incidents exposed on the Dark Web, while on average, there are over 4,000 stolen credentials and other sensitive data exposed per cybersecurity company. Even the cybersecurity industry itself is not immune to these problems, as demonstrated in ImmuniWeb's research. Key findings that the research found relating to the leading global cybersecurity companies' exposure on the Dark Web included: 97% of companies have data leaks and other security incidents exposed on the Dark Web. 631,512 verified security incidents were found with over 25% (or 160,529) of those classed as a high or critical risk level+ containing highly sensitive information such as plaintext credentials or PII, including financial or similar data. Hence, on average, there a...